The Immortal Empire
by Synthesis
Summary: The Ctarl-Ctarl Empire-what other words conjure up so much political animosity and scorn among humankind? The vast realms of the children of Terra have never came together with such purpose but to resist the belligerence of that interstellar empire, and will never again. What will the crew of the Outlaw Star do when the Empire calls back one of its long-absent daughters?
1. Prelude

_**The Immortal Empire – Episode 1: Prelude**_

He had a very odd-sounding name to her, Dr. Cheever Carthy, the professor for Introductory Ethics and Philosophy of Melfina's college who also had a strange habit of posting his name in Japanese syllabary on the first slide of a digital presentation. It appeared as he introduce the subject matter for the first few minutes of that class's lecture. Sitting in the front row, Melfina couldn't read Japanese syllabary; she didn't even realize it was his name until another student told her.

The first slide came up with the title. Though the presentation looked rather dated, it was only a year old if that, and he'd credited another professor with it.

 **FILE No. 9917  
Observations on Humans and Androids  
© DR. KARTZ T.S. 159**

"The difference," Dr. Carthy began, "…between humans and robots is obvious. After all there are clear differences between living and nonliving entities," he explained as an image of a human and a mechanical drone turned to anatomical cross-sections of themselves.

"But what about the differences between humans and cyborgs?" he asked, bringing up an image of a young cyborg. "This is not a problem—a cyborg is someone who has extrahuman abilities due to mechanical systems incorporated into their body," he said, the image changing to reveal the human's muscular structure and extensive prostheses.

"Bu how does one classify bio-androids?" he asked. Perhaps unintentionally, he brought up an image of what was clearly a bio-gynoid rather than a bio-android, a woman enjoying the company of a domestic pet. "Actually, this gives rise to ethical issues. If one were to classify a bio-android, it would be a life-form. As a cyborg is a person, a bio-android wherein machinery is combined with flesh, must also be a person. However, must humans say that they can't be regarded as human, as humans were created by God whereas androids were created by _humans_. Their reasoning is that we humans have souls, but androids don't."

Neither Dr. Carthy, nor any of her classmates knew Melfina was a bio-gynoid herself, and she intended to keep it that way. She kept a calm, politely interested expression on her face.

"However, the existence of a creator 'God', and even of a 'soul', has yet to be proven scientifically. So the classification of bio-androids remains unclear." Dr. Carthy put his hands together and cocked his head. "So where does this leave us?" he asked with some rhetorical flourish, ending the file.

Well before any student ventured a guess, he continued. "Well, there are other species, aren't there?" The class he was addressing—like every other class at this particular school—was filled with humans of some sort or another. There were no Corbanites, no Nayans, no Silgrians, even though there were Silgrian professors, Melfina had seen them, with their long necks and friendly grins. "This has brought us to another unending religious debate: assuming God created humans, what does that say about other sapient species? It's no secret that the human 'first contact' with other sapient species at the beginning of the Toward Stars calendar was initially seen as a challenging to the omnipresence, omnipotence, and omniscience of the human god or gods as it were. In fact some would argue that it's still the case, especially in regards to our most biologically-similar counterparts in the known universe."

Beginning a new file, he changed the image on the slide to a slender but large-chested woman with dark skin and dirty blonde hair, who wore dull-colored overalls over an undersized red shirt and a white helmet. She was carrying a pneumatic hammer of some type, standing on a steel girder high over the ground—a construction laborer.

"Of course, I mean the Ctarl-Ctarl, with whom we share extremely similar genetic material. A human god that did not create the Ctarl-Ctarl is, an obvious case, not a particularly omnipotent god, is it?"

* * *

As the head of the entire Imperial government, Prime Minister Koboro-Koboro had gradually sought to ease people's impressions of him as the years went by, or at least, the impression of the Ctarl-Ctarl. What Terrans or the Corbonites thought of him was of interest, but difficult to control, especially in the case of the former. Corbano knew the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire well, they'd seen dozens of prime ministers come and go over the last two dynasties as a "client state." But with the Terrans, it was like trying to force smoke conform to a particular shape.

People had been afraid of him in those early years, when a no-name junior MP of the Socialist Party, a complete unknown from the lower house of parliament with a few years service in the Imperial Navy's Office of Wartime Management and Oversight, the bureaucracy that monitored the bureaucracy as a whole, was chosen to represent a majority in the new government. That hadn't been his intention, but it happened anyway. Apparently, no amount of friendly smiling could hide the fact he had the face of a killer—something he didn't want to believe and troubled him profoundly, but he heard repeated just enough to put stock in. Part of remedying that unfortunate appearance was being as accessible as possible, especially to Her Imperial Majesty.

Always let them see you smiling—that was his idea. Koboro-Koboro was not the smiling type, unfortunately, though he had made himself as much during that previously campaign season. Democracy was imperfect, even Ctarl-Ctarl democracy which he believed, in earnest, to be the greatest most authentic democracy in the universe, and once it was clear he would be the Socialist Party's candidate for the highest elected office in the universe, his appearance mattered more. Be all smiles, gentle, harmless in appearance—all that mattered after his appointment. It mattered even more after he "brought down" Marianna IV, the current empress's aunt—an unfair description in his mind. He had not "brought her down," merely forced a solution to the succession crisis she was directly responsible for. Of course she hadn't meant for such a thing to happen, but she let it happen anyway, and what point was there having a prime minister if not to clean up the monarchy's messes?

"They still haven't forgotten that," he said to himself in a moment of privacy on his way to the Imperial Court. Not a courtier himself but an actual official of government, he'd been summoned by Her Imperial Majesty, and some things still worked that way. This is where he'd find her.

"His Excellency the Prime Minister," the honor guard officer introduced him, one of a half-dozen standing at attention in front of the Tachi-Tachi Hall of Victory, the massive reception hall that held the Crystal Throne. Of course Her Imperial Majesty had better things to do than sit on an ancient, somewhat uncomfortable chair, but it was how the Imperial Court still functioned even today.

Part of the crowd of courtiers—equal parts military officers in their dark green greatcoats, young celebrities, members of parliament and other people of some importance—turned to him very briefly and acknowledged him with polite nods. No salutes, as he wasn't a military leader, of course. The prime minister made through them, secretly a man with purpose, his way to his sovereign, as unobtrusively though not as quickly as he could have.

"Your Imperial Majesty," he said, bowing deeply.

The young beauty sitting in the ancient, awkward, uncomfortable-looking throne broke off her conversation with another woman and looked at him. "Mr. Koboro-Koboro!" Empress Kasara declared, her eyes widening. And she was a beauty, even he thought so—flawless copper skin, large blue eyes, and shimmering crimson hair. The Empire's head of state possessing such stunning good looks was advantageous—she was certainly more beautiful than her Terran counterparts or their daughters—but it was one of the few advantages the 21-year-old monarch actually had. "Thank you for coming so quickly."

"Of course, Your Highness," he assured her while she wrapped up her previous conversation. Kasara IV surrounded herself with her female friends constantly, perhaps her greatest source of joy and comfort. It was lonely at the top, to no one's surprise. The prime minister found it a little sad, but obviously made no impression of that as she beckoned him to the throne.

"I was visited by Lord Admiral Clan-Clan earlier today," she began in that soft, gentle-voiced manner of hers. "He...well, he knew my father when I was a child. You know that."

He gave the most subtle of nods. Dawid Clan-Clan was an admiral in the 181st Royal Taskforce, the large military fleet kept in orbit around the homeworld, and while technically a commoner—like the prime minister—was a close friend of Her Highness's late father, Emperor Anton. Unlike his predecessor, most of Anton's friends had been bourgeois, middle-class men, the "average sort" one might say.

"He mentioned he has a daughter my age who's still in the navy. If it's all right, I'd like to invite her to court," she said quietly. "If it's all right."

He reached into the archives of his mind—it was not realistic to know the standing of every daughter of every admiral in the entire Imperial Navy. But Dawid Clan-Clan was notable: he had been part of the staff that took the surrender of the Terran Forces in the last war, and also chaired the Supreme Military Council for Peacetime Policy. His wife was an ex-commando, an "Immortal Ctarl-Ctarl" as it were, and a common sight at court. He had three children, two sons and a daughter. The youngest of them, Aisha, was in Terran space on a very minor ambassadorship.

He remembered the only advice he ever got from his predecessor, an ascendant deputy prime minister from the rival conservative party who'd failed to be elected on his own merits in the general election: his party, the Imperial Victory and Order Party, had dominated the political landscape for so many many years under the prime minister before last, the political potentate who could've been sovereign, perhaps, but chose to be prime minister instead, and Kasara's great-grandfather.

Always keep your empress happy. That's what his predecessor had told him, the hostility plainly evident in his voice. Keep her happy, unless you don't plan to keep her at all.

"Of course, Your Highness, I can't think of anything that might possibly stay in the way of that. I'll send for her return immediately."

The pretty young woman beamed at him, all smiles again. Koboro-Koboro was almost old enough to be her father, and had served her father Anton before her. In fact, technically, he'd served three separate monarchs in his office.

Keep your empress happy if you intend to keep her.


	2. Heifong, Pt I

_**The Immortal Empire - Episode 2: Heifong, Pt. I**_

 _Year 160, Toward Stars Calendar_

"A new ceasefire between the Social Democrats and provisional government forces of the _Pyotr Imperiya_ seems guaranteed, as is its eventual failure leading to another round of talks between _Sankt-Yekaterina_ and the rebel capital at Einsteingrad, near the frontiers of the Einhorn Reich."

Gene didn't know what annoyed him more—that Melfina had taken to this habit of reading newspaper front page articles out loud, or the rapid, enunciated tone she took as she did so. He tried to be kind as he turned to her. "Melfina…"

"Oh, I'm sorry," she apologized immediately in that soft voice that replaced the stilted, machine-looking chatter of earlier. That was really what he wanted most anyway.

"It's fine. I just never pegged you for a news junkie."

She smiled. "It's just so fascinating and exciting to read about the rest of the world."

 _Must be a college thing,_ he thought. That was Melfina's occasionally-anachronistic speech patterns getting the better of her—'world' meant 'universe' in this case. He took the newspaper after she'd neatly folded it and set it down on the coffee table, peering at the front page. "Can't see why. All there ever is more bad news. 'Must have been like this during the war," he said, referencing the short war with the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire that concluded when he was still an infant, the one that brought the empires of humanity to their knees. "Experts hoping for a settlement between the Pyotr Imperiya and the Novo-...Novo-…"

"Novokhabarovsk Republic," Melfina finished for him, looking over her shoulder. Gene gave her a bemused smile.

"More Pyotrian names I can't pronounced," he chuckled.

"You better learn then," another voice warned. "If we want that job with Dr. Sputnik."

The owner of the other half of Starwind and Hawking Enterprise, James Hawking, gestured at the ceiling of their Heifong office as if to emphasize his point. Both he and Gene had discussed the good doctor extensively, always using his silly-sounding pseudonym since they lacked much less to go by.

"Good morning, Jim!"

Jim was all smiles for Melfina, as usual. "Good morning, Melfina. You don't have to go back to school today?"

"No, I still have another day before I really ought to get back," she admitted cheerily. Jim grinned back, apparently pleased at this mild degree of mischievousness. "Do you want breakfast?"

"You know it."

"He better—he's still a growing boy," Gene declared behind a mug of coffee. Jim gave him a look that he ignored.

"I'll learn Pyotrian if I have to," he lied. "But I want to know—are these morning company meetings going to become a thing?"

"Geeze, Gene," Jim said, his voice betraying his concerns about their companies future. He was about to express as much when the front door swung open and its attached bell jingled. "Suzuka, right on time!"

Of their group—the original crew of the cruiser _Outlaw Star_ anyway—it was clear that Suzuka had changed the least, appropriate given her being a little older than Gene. The Twilight Assassin, as they knew her originally, entered in a white kimono and a wooden sword in her hand, as she always had. "Aren't I always?" she asked coolly before sitting down by an empty spot on the other couch Melfina had laid out for her. "Melfina, you're still here," she said, not sounding displeased.

"Yes, it's very nice to see you too Suzuka," she said, having taken it as a disguised compliment. "Would you like breakfast?"

"With tea please, yes."

Gene gave a dissatisfied grunt, unhappy with the direction the morning had taken, then tried to take charge. "So, that just leaves the latecomer, as usual," he said with a snort.

"Actually, from what I remember Aisha was always rather punctual," Melfina chirped.

Gene responded with a hand through his red hair before looking at Suzuka. "Long time no see. Where is she, by the way?" As in the past, Suzuka had been their contact with Aisha Clan-Clan oddly enough.

Before Suzuka could answer, Jim interrupted with a laugh. "Hah! Get a load of you! Two weeks ago, you didn't want anything to do with Aisha."

"Shut up, Jim, or I might change my mind."

"Then who's gonna' do all the heavy lifting?" Jim asked smugly, pleased at his own entendre. Gene reached out and nearly caught him by his shirt collar, Jim narrowly ducking behind the chair just in time. He stood just out of Gene's reach before looking at Suzuka. "By the way, Suzuka, where is Aisha?"

"About that…" she began slowly and quietly.

The others went silent. Even Melfina said nothing after bringing Suzuka her tea and some of the toast with jam they were eating, sitting down on the opposite couch and folding up her apron. Eyes closed, Suzuka turned her head very slowly as though in deliberation before opening her eyes and reaching into her kimono. She produced the last thing any of them expected, an envelope.

"This came for me, addressed to all of us," she confessed finally, clearly uncomfortable with the situation but otherwise returning to her monotone. Jim was about to take it when Gene snatched it from Suzuka, who rather than opening it inspected it warily.

"I don't think Aisha's ever written any of us a letter," Melfina pointed out.

"I don't think she has," Gene replied, his voice grim while holding the envelope as though it was laced with toxin. It'd already been opened, but Suzuka seemed unwilling to share its contents, so after a few seconds Gene emptied its contents on the table. The completely normal, yellow office envelope had a normal paper letter inside, folded twice. On it was Aisha's handwriting, that unfamiliar scrawl she left when hurriedly writing in what was to her an alien language generically called 'Terran'.

Gene stared at it. After reading the letter, he was no less confused. Looking over his shoulder, Jim read it out loud. "'I've gone home for important reasons. Don't come looking for me. Aisha.'"

"Oh my."

"Why am I even surprised?" Gene asked, tossing the letter and envelope over his shoulder and reaching for his food at the coffee table. "Three years ago we couldn't get rid of her. Now this. That's Aisha for you."

"Gene!"

"Oh, come on Jim, when you told me about the Doc you knew there was a fifty-fifty chance Aisha wouldn't even be on board for this. She never wanted to get involved with any political stuff, and for once, she's right," he announced, tapping a finger against the folded newspaper on the table.

"I suppose it _was_ bound to happen," Suzuka muttered between sips of tea.

"Besides, we'll just make do without her."

Gene finished off the pieces of toast on his plate while Jim and Suzuka exchanged wary looks. They said nothing until Gene had finished his coffee. "What?" he growled, eyes darting back and forth.

"He doesn't know?" Suzuka asked Jim directly, causing him to put a hand over the back of his head.

"Jim…"

"If Aisha's gone home, she probably took her back pay with her," he pointed out innocuously, as though commenting on the weather.

Gene's eyes bugged out, getting a chuckle from Suzuka, who raised her kimono sleeve over her face. " _Back pay_?"

"This is why I'm always on you to actually pay attention to the books," Jim snapped back.

"What back pay Jim?" Gene yelled, reaching over the back of the couch in his direction angrily.

"I remember this," Melfina muttered, breaking her silence, her eyes lighting up. "The last time I saw Aisha, she asked me to look over these papers she had…receipts…"

"Well, they weren't exactly receipts," Jim confessed. "They were basically time sheets for all of Aisha's time on the _Outlaw Star_. You know, what we _agreed to pay her_!?"

"When did we agree to pay her?" Gene barked.

"When she had to give up her share of the Galactic Leyline because there was _no_ Galactic Leyline, or there wasn't any material wealth from it anyway!" Jim retorted. "Remember that whole adventure? How Aisha was there too? Of course we had to pay at some point, she wasn't a volunteer! Or a _slave_!"

Gene buried his face in his hand and gave a deep, animalistic groan as Melfina put her arms on his shoulders.

"Remember the Grave of the Dragon? We needed her there! Or the Universal Strongman Tournament? The Heifong VII salvage mission? The Crackerjack Gang? _The MacDougalls_? She had to get paid for all those things, did you think she was doing out of the goodness of her heart?"

Gene didn't respond. "I mean, geeze, we _did_ get paid for some of her work at least _once_. Remember Crackerjack's bounty? Would _you_ have stopped grand theft posing as terrorism for free?" Jim fell down in a nearby armchair, arms crossed. "She didn't even ask for a percentage that time, just the negotiated rate for her labor, twenty wong an hour before taxes."

Jim's eyes darted back and forth eagerly. "Plus, you know, all the other normal stuff."

Gene grumbled something between his hands.

"What?"

"How much did you give her, Jim?" Gene asked after lowering his hands.

To his dismay, Jim's face turned red and he looked away. "The account included her hourly salary, as well as her share for the bounties Starwind and Hawking actually _did_ collect of hers, plus a human healthcare plan she never used while paying into it…"

"Jim!"

"About eighty thousand wong."

* * *

What shocked Aisha more than anything was how much she owed in debt. The concept was almost completely foreign to her—debt was something that belonged to ministries and directorates of the government, often something accrued in wartime when the government had to bypass the normal channels to meet production quotas for extremely large military equipment, the sort that couldn't be easily stockpiled. Not small arms or missiles—production of those never ceased, and the government had enough stored up to fight a thousand wars, but things like extra corporate contractors for ships, hiring a civilian shipyard to help complete a dreadnought that was behind schedule, and so forth.

She'd never been in debt herself. During those shameful days busing tables in Blue Heaven or waitressing at the Annual Heifong Space Rally, she hadn't acquired debt—she either had money or she didn't, in which case, she owed her labor rather than nonexistent money for accidentally smashing a plate or a table or, more rarely, a grabby customer. Before that, the military paid all her living expenses. And before that, her family had always been wealthy, though it was more accurate to say they were caretakers rather than owners of their lands and estates.

She'd followed the dispatches to Heifong, especially those printed by the government. Nowadays, the Holy Empire's total national debt was roughly a third of the gross national product—an embarrassingly high amount to the Empire but still much, much less than its foreign counterparts, and almost all of it held by the public, with Corbono and Silgria holding small percentages. The last of the debt owned by Terrans, she heard, was paid off in T.S. 159 against the totals of the War Guilt Clause that stipulated the Terran nations owed more than forty trillion wong to the Empire when they assumed all responsibility for the war they'd lost. Apparently that wasn't even that much compared to the total debt of the four major nations, which she wasn't convinced anyone knew.

"That leaves me with…less than fifty thousand…" she mumbled, a pencil in one hand and her pocketbook in the other. She really didn't understand how much that was—she didn't know the conversion rate from Terran wong to Imperial notes—though given how long it'd taken to earn it, how much labor and suffering had been involved, it seemed like a great deal. Furthermore she had no way of accessing her military wages.

Still, skipping out of Heifong without paying her debts seemed worse. The way things looked, the wong might've been useless in the Empire anyway. "How did I even get this far into debt?" It was still a mystery to her, after all that hitchhiking and penny-pinching and scavenging…

Looking up from the table on the edge of the outdoor café, she glanced across the street. The Imperial Consulate on Heifong was located on the edge of the commercial district, by the Heifong Government's Supreme Court building at the end of Consulate Row. It was easy to pick out: it was a generally very Terran-looking building, but in the courtyard between the marble façade and the avenue that lined Consulate Row was a garden surrounding a modest but unmissable statue of the Empress of All Ctarl-Ctarl which was clearly much newer than the pedestal it stood on. When she finally worked up the nerve to enter through the main gate, she found a consular official sitting in the lobby behind the main desk eyeing her suspiciously.

The officer on duty was more than mildly surprised when a very fit Ctarl-Ctarl woman around the age of twenty—the diplomatic officer was the same age and immediately noticed the similarities in their build and complexion—meekly entered past the security checkpoint at the front door. The two guards actually hadn't paid her attention when she failed to set off the weapons scanner, but now all three of them scrutinized her closely, breaking her down into separate elements for threat assessment as they'd been trained to, mostly by her attire. Torn brown leggings hastily repaired with mismatched patches under a threadbare dark green long-sleeved minidress with dirty white lining. Worn-out black boots under white wraps. A chipped white breastplate and a stiff collar, with various bits of well-worn gold jewelry—a bell on the collar, bracelets, an officer's tiara under extremely long white hair that was braided into a gold ring at the end. Narrow shoulders hidden underneath scratched-up shoulder guards, and a long green scarf wrapped around her collarbone and draped over her shoulder. Every single article of clothing she wore was dilapidated, as though they'd been only been amateurishly maintained over the years, and she looked like the cross between an off-season athlete and a failed spy.

The diplomatic officer said nothing, squinting at her through her wireframe eyeglasses attached by a thin silver chain to her tunic. _The Foreign Ministry's always scared me a little_ , Aisha thought, pressing her feet together nervously. It was one of the most powerful ministries in the Empire, right behind the War Ministry, and because of its responsibilities, often more secretive. Her mother had always told her they were never interested in honor and valor, only in what was practical and political. Eventually she worked up the nerve to open her mouth.

"I-I'm…"

"Speak up," she ordered the strange, frightened-looking woman while leaning over the counter.

"I'm…I'm the Empire's Ambassador Plenipotentiary to the Blue Heaven Region, Aisha Clan-Clan," she chanted in a single breath. She turned to find both guards standing right before her and visibly jumped with a cry.

The officer looked at her. This was by far the least convincing story she'd heard this month, considering how few Ctarl-Ctarl were actually living on Heifong, and even fewer who went to their consulate. She cocked her head and stared the white-haired woman down for a few more seconds.

"Put your hand out," she commanded finally. The woman complied with uncertainty, and she poked her with the tip of a biometric scanner she kept under the counter. The extremely accurate tool relied on a direct DNA sample, usually blood or skin. It took almost half a minute for the computer to check with the central database with the Foreign Affairs Ministry lightyears away in the Imperial Capital.

The officer stared at her screen—the very fit woman checked out. "You're quite far from your posting, Lady Ambassador," she announced, not bothering to soften her tone. "What are you doing on Heifong, ma'am?"

"I…uh…" she began as one of the guards raised her arms and quickly frisked her, passing his hands over her formfitting outfit. That didn't bother her in the least, but he stopped at the small military-style pouch hanging from a belt on her thin waist and inspected it. "Hey!"

"Lady Aisha!" the officer snapped, getting back her attention. "Before I can take you to the Consular-General, I have to ask you, why _aren't_ you at your posting in Blue Heaven? And why _are_ you here in Heifong?"

Aisha's jaw went slack and she cocked her to the side, raising both hands above the counter in a very dramatic expression of defeat. It was the same expression she'd found herself using when she'd been confused by Gene Starwind's antics, something that had not at all been a rarity.

"It's a really…really long story."

The official pushed her glasses up again and put her hands together, indicating she had no shortage of time to listen. So Aisha began from the only place she knew how: from the faithful day aboard the cruiser _Orta Honehone_ in space around Blue Heaven, when she'd received a general alert concerning the infamous space outlaw 'Hot Ice' Hilde.

* * *

 _Terms To Know:_

 **Pyotr Imperiya (Петр Империя) -** Russian (or in this case, Pyotrian) for the Pyotr (lit. Petra, similar to 'Peter') Empire. One of the four great Earthling Empires alluded to in series reference materials, and was the homeland of Dr. Sputnik in the aborted sequel series.

 **\- Sankt-Yekaterina (Санкт-** **Екатерина) -** Pyotrian for Saint Catherine, the name of Pyotr Imperiya's capital, named for Catherine (the Second) the Great (Екатерина II Великая), the Eighteenth Century empress.

 **\- Novokhabarovsk Republic (Новохабаровск Республика) -** Pyotrian for the New (Neo-) Khabarovsk Republic, named after the city in eastern Russia. In _A Terran for the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire_ , it was created by the Pyotrian Social Democratic Party after they overthrew the Pyotrian Emperor but fell out with the conservative Provisional Government which was left to rule. Located between the Pyotr Imperiya and its Germanic neighbor, the Einhorn Reich.

 **\- Einsteingrad (** **Эйнштейнград) -** The capital of the Novokhabarovsk Republic, named for pioneering Soviet film director Sergey Mikhailovich Einstein (Сергей Михайлович Эйзенштейн).

 **War Guilt Clause -** Article 231 of the Treaty of Homige, signed between the Earthling Empires and the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire and formally ending the war after the surrender of the Earthling space navies at Liberty Bell. It stipulated that all responsibility for the proceeding war fell upon the four Earthing powers, who thereby made legal commitment to pay reparations of tens of trillions of wong.


	3. Heifong, Pt II

**_The Immortal Empire – Episode 3: Heifong, Pt. II_**

"How's Gene taking the news?"

The question was posed by Suzuka, who returned a few hours after lunchtime to Starwind and Hawking Industries.

Jim glanced over his shoulder to the door of the other office—Gene could be heard shouting angrily on the other side into a phone handset.

"Not great. He broke down and called Fred Lou."

"Really?" Suzuka seemed particularly but mildly surprised. "He must be desperate."

"You better believe it. Eighty-thousand on its own isn't enough to get the _Outlaw Star_ all the way across Ban Guild Space, much less through the DMZ into the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire, which must be where Aisha is heading." Jim had mad the logical guess: 'home' for Aisha almost certainly meant the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire, to whom she was a national.

Melfina seemed to be thinking the same thing. "'Home' could even mean 'Hokiyo', what the Ctarl-Ctarl sometimes call their homeworld in the Nochi-Nochi star cluster."

When Suzuka looked back at Jim, he already had his personal computer out and was accessing navigation charts. "Let's really hope not. The Nochi-Nochi star cluster is almost in the dead center of the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire, about two-hundred lightyears galactic center of the DMZ." He looked up from his persocom and heaved another of many sighs. "At least we'd have some idea where to start looking."

"And Fred Lou?" Suzuka asked.

"Gene's trying to coax a job out of him that'll cover the costs. I mean, we _have_ to get the money back, even if it costs more just to find Aisha." He put a hand to his head. "Figures Lou Enterprises sells arms to and from everyone _but_ the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire. Though I have to admit, it's not a bad idea, every year trade between us and the Ctarl-Ctarl rises at least eight percent."

"Why not just go alone? Or even just by a normal spaceliner?" Suzuka asked. "Pride?" she guessed, with a grin.

"Hardly. You don't know this, Suzuka, since it's before we met, but this isn't exactly the first time this happened," Jim began grimly. "When we met Aisha for the first time, she'd gotten kicked out of the Ctarl-Ctarl Navy and tracked us down to Blue Heaven by herself, looking for the Galactic Leyline. And she came _really_ close to bringing us all in, by herself, or worse."

"Did Aisha never tell you this story?" Melfina asked, surprised.

"Not in so many words," she replied. In truth, Aisha might have but, like many of her longwinded stories, Suzuka may have tuned it out.

"The point is, with barely any money and by herself, Aisha almost took in the three of us," Jim warned. "It took her being half-starved, shot with a No. 12 caster shell, and straddled with a restaurant bill for four to stop her."

He leaned towards Suzuka and beckoned her closer. "Don't tell Gene though, it's not the way he sees it."

"I see."

"Unless Gene lets all of this go, which _he_ won't, and Aisha doesn't just give up the money, which _she_ won't, that's how it's gotta' be. _If_ we can find her, which is a big 'if'."

"And he won't listen to reason?" Suzuka asked. Even as a mercenary, she thought Gene was blowing this out of proportion over 80,000 wong.

"Truth be told, this might all be moot anyway. I'm not even convinced we can find her. If Aisha wants to disappear, as hard as that is to imagine, I bet she's better at it than she'd let on, and we don't even have any place to start," he declared, looking up at Melfina.

"We know she came from a large, well-to-do family connected to the government. It doesn't mean they're on the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire's capital world, but that should be a start," she explained. 'We' was being generous—Melfina was starting to suspect she was the only one who actually listened to Aisha's stories over the years.

"If we're lucky, the Clan-Clans are either famous enough, or the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire is organized enough that we might be able to track her down based on that. If we're _really_ lucky, and the Clan-Clans are rich, maybe they'd be willing to pay Gene off just to get rid of us," Jim speculated, not sounding convinced.

"It's not the worst idea, but you really should make an effort to confront her before she crosses back into the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire. The Ctarl-Ctarl take their border security extremely seriously, and hate Pirates _and_ Outlaws. If you can't get an entry visa, that may be the end of it."

"We need your help."

Suzuka took a deep sip of the cup of tea offered to her by Melfina. "I was afraid you'd say that," she said afterwards.

"Come on, you're closer to Aisha than any of us!" Jim pleaded, climbing off the couch. "She might actually listen to you!"

Suzuka gave him an incredulous look that stopped just short of being unkind, something she excelled at. "I think the time for listening has long passed. In a matter of days she'll be in the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire anyway."

"Ugh, that's what I've been telling Gene!" Jim cried out. "But he won't listen either! Those two deserve each other!"

Suzuka chuckled darkly while Melfina looked at Jim, a frown firmly affixed to his face, and was about to offer a suggestion when the door swung open and Gene entered, thumbs resting on his belt. He looked up at Suzuka calmly.

"Suzuka, you're back. Did you find anything?" He remained calm, to Jim and Melfina's surprise.

"Nothing yet, sorry." Suzuka had searched Aisha's 'apartment'—or more accurately, the room at the youth hostel in Heifong City where Aisha'd live after their company moved back to Heifong. They'd returned after Gene was released for time served on the destruction of public infrastructure charge on Sentinel III, after the conclusion of the whole Leyline incident. Aisha had carved out a small niche as most famous Ctarl-Ctarl working in food delivery in Hugo, the planet's largest city, while waiting for a trip home that had been promised to her by the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire when some government agency or another actually managed to get ahold of her.

After it became apparent they couldn't pay back the 200,000 wong they owed Fred Lou to pay Gene's fines, on top of the million or so wong they already owed, they decided to skip town. Gene planned to take a job in Oracion. Suzuka declined to join them, since she'd already been, and in an uncharacteristically thoughtful decision, Aisha preferred to stay on Sentinel III, making end's meat by delivering pizza. Halfway to Oracion, the _Outlaw Star_ had broken down thanks to all the corner-cutting they'd down on Munchausen reactor maintenance. To their surprise, both Suzuka and Aisha hitched a ride with the repair ship and joined them on their way to Oracion _anyway._ It was the start of Aisha's narrative about the recompense owed to her, and how the _Outlaw Star_ and its equipment was part of the security towards that payment.

Jim was surprised how clearly he remembered that week—Gene's hair was still short-cropped from his time in jail, a look he'd kept on and off since then. He even remembered Aisha having chopped off most of her knee-length braids into a more modest ponytail before she grew it back. The Oracion job, unsurprisingly, was mostly a bust like everything else they did, though it at least managed to not put them any further in the red, so long as they completed ignored Aisha's claims, which they did. Continuing to avoid Fred Lou and Sentinel III, they settled on Heifong afterwards. Aisha went back to food delivery and other odd jobs, and started living at the hostel. The dorm room that she shared with three other Ctarl-Ctarl women was a natural fit, and also served as a home address when she needed one, which most jobs in Heifong City, being less sketchy than Locust or Hugo, demanded.

 _Come to think of it, if that Oracion job had panned out, and Aisha and Suzuka hadn't snuck onboard, we probably would've fallen out a lot faster. We might not even have paid Aisha_ , he speculated quietly.

"What about her roommates?" Suzuka asked, interrupting his thoughts.

"None of them were in. I think they're all students during the day."

"I thought two of them were strippers, and one was a waitress," Gene pointed out. Jim gave him a look before shaking his head.

"That doesn't exclude that possibility."

"Great. Just great."

Suzuka finished her tea. "I also wouldn't recommend going back—spooking Aisha's roommates into calling the police won't help us."

"What about the food delivery service?"

"It's worth a shot. They ranted and raved about her from what I remember," Jim pointed out.

Once again, Gene looked less disturbed and angry than he expected, and he was becoming suspicious. "So, why're you so serene? Fred Lou forgive part of our debt?"

"Hardly. And he didn't help with a job either, but he did jog something up here that might help us if worst comes to worst," he said with a grin, pointing at his head.

Jim didn't even begin to believe him. "What?"

"Remember Novo-whatsitsname?" he said, still grinning.

Jim and Melfina turned to him in unison, with a look of disdain and confusion respectively.

* * *

"Her Imperial Majesty is here, sir."

Tomas Koboro-Koboro looked up from his papers, quite surprised. He usually knew when to expect his sovereign would pay him a visit, even if Empress Kasara clearly made an attempt to catch him off guard. This was a rare victory on her part.

He wasn't worried—there was nothing really to be worried about. Just because the sovereign tried to surprise him, and usually failed, didn't mean there was any malice towards him. He put his pen down and addressed one of his secretaries, the one who'd peeked into his office with the news. "I see. Please tell Her Highness I'm ready."

'Highness' was actually the form of address the sovereign preferred, even if 'Imperial Majesty' was the correct one and part of her formal title itself. 'Highness' could apply to anyone in her family in actuality, like the Princess Fatima or the Empress-Dowager. It might even apply to the sovereign's great-grandfather, the ancient Lord Zubayr Tovarl-Tovarl, a former prime minister but never sovereign himself, though before he'd very much stopped saying anything at all, he'd preferred the title of 'Excellency' traditional to the premiership.

So many titles to remember, names too. Not very long ago, Tomas Koboro-Koboro had just been Tomas Koboro, as he had been all his life. Then for the 'accomplishment' of being elected prime minister by the victorious political coalition, he'd received the honor of a reduplicated name. Repeating surnames were one of the last vestiges of the peerage system, granted to the ancient Ctarl-Ctarl nobility before war and revolution had made them an honor for great accomplishment instead of great ancestry. Technically, he was 'Lord Tomas Koboro-Koboro' or even 'the right honorable Lord Tomas Koboro-Koboro', but he quite disliked those.

As expected, a pair of women entered the room before the sovereign did, and no doubt there were a pair of very similar women who remained outside. All gorgeous young beauties, roughly the same age as their mistress, dressed in expensive finery. Some would argue they were more attractive than she was, which was sort of the point: the young empress kept a number of ladies-in-waiting nearby, the daughters of families closest to the Imperial family and the Imperial Household Agency too. They served a variety of purposes. Many were part of the Imperial Household Agency's bodyguard unit, separate from the military. At least one of them, with the same delicate features and complexion, served very infrequently as a double. They were a guaranteed sight if the sovereign wasn't traveling with a bodyguard detail from the military.

Kasara IV took her time entering, a habit of hers: she had a very delicate, elegant way of moving, like a porcelain statue brought to life. She looked just about as fragile, even if she shouldn't be, taking a seat in the chair in front of him and putting her hands together in her lap.

"Your Highness, is something the matter?"

She took her time responding, a stern regard on her face. She wore one of the 'normal' glamorous dresses that made up a large chunk of her wardrobe, nothing too revealing that didn't show her navel or chest, though her shoulders were bare. "I was told something by the Chief of Staff that worried me very deeply, that the government was doing something I understood to be illegal."

 _Oh, the Chief of Staff._ He did a good job masking his irritation. It was actually a fair complaint on Her Highness's part, though he couldn't help but blame the Chief of Staff for sending her down here, unexpected, in a tizzy. Kasara IV had been gradually replacing the older men and women who'd served the last two sovereigns—her father and aunt respectively—with younger faces she found more amenable. That too was normal.

He took his time answering. The urge to rush was counterproductive, it would just upset his empress. "I'm sure it's nothing so serious, but I'd be happy to review it for Your Highness."

She put a finger to her head. "That new law from last year, from the Foreign Ministry, it's…number…" she began, closing her eyes and concentrating. Despite her appearance, she was actually a very capable, intelligent woman in her own right—"brains and beauty" one might joke. He wouldn't. "Public Law 215-3-110-FM…"

He knew it immediately. A public law passed in year 215 of the Third Dynasty, the reign of the Hashiyo-Hashiyo. Law number one-hundred and ten. 'FM' indicated its origin, that it had been submitted by the Imperial Foreign Ministry, which suggested it was something concerning diplomacy. Seldom more than nine-hundred and ninety-nine laws passed in a year, after all. "The Public Law on the Sales of Military Arms and Equipment to the Terran States," he recounted its formal name. "It replaced Public Law 199-3-429-ITM, passed by you aunt, Marianna IV, but said the same thing: that all respective ministries and industries were forbidden from selling equipment and hardware classified as 'weaponry' to the Terran empires or other governments."

She nodded, a rather un-majestic thing to do. "Yes, that one precisely. I was in attendance in parliament when it was passed, I remember."

She probably did—as young as she was, Kasara IV had probably personally witnessed dozens of laws passed through parliament, possible more than a hundred. Attending parliament was one of her most regular responsibilities. Again, she was smarter than she might appear.

"Indeed you were, Your Highness. And may I ask about your concern…?" he began, leaving it open ended, even though he suspected he knew what she'd say next.

He was right. "I was told by my friend, the Chief of Staff, that we've sold at least eighteen-hundred tonnes of terrestrial military weapons like missiles, rail guns, artillery to a Terran state, the Republic of Novo…Novo…" she began, struggling with the name.

It wasn't an easy one, he agreed. "Novokhabarovsk, Your Highness," he said, taking care to sound very modest and subdue, almost to the point of indifference. He was the tone he took in private with Her Highness to appear as nonthreatening and faithful to her as humanly possible. His voice was relaxed and a little grave, as though he was ordering lunch at a pub.

"Yes, that's it." She leaned towards him, less composed. No matter how she tried, the sovereign felt deeply passionate about things, enough to provoke a reaction. "Why is that happening, Mr. Koboro-Koboro? Isn't that quite illegal?" she asked, her face locked up in a statue-like visage of nobility but her curvaceous form trembling in the chair. She kept her hands together.

He took his time answering, as he thought she'd prefer. Answer too quickly, and you'd risk upsetting her. She might think you were angry at her, and that _would_ upset her. As long as it was clear she had your attention, you could take all the time you wanted. In truth, he knew the answer to her inquiry while she was still asking it. "I'm quite sorry this matter troubled Your Highness. It shouldn't have, it's not reasonable to expect you to manage all the day to day business of the military industry, much less the Imperial economy."

"But-But I'd like to know, all the same," she insisted.

He nodded very plainly. "I'll do my best to explain, of course: earlier this year we passed an amendment to that law. Naturally, Your Highness doesn't attend to every amendment passed through parliamentary subcommittees." This was true: there were often many amendments to a given public law, and by contrast they did not need to go through a full session of parliament. A subcommittee of the upper or lower assembly were typically enough. "The proviso was very specific in its nature, I can assure you, as I reviewed it personally myself."

He stood up and touched the intercom on his desk. "Please have someone bring up a copy of Public Law Amendment 215-3-110-FM-1 for Her Imperial Majesty's consideration," he instructed. By giving Kasara IV nothing less than an official legal copy from his office, he was demonstrating how seriously he took her inquiry. "In the meantime, I can recite the gist of it, if not the exact words, from memory, Your Highness"

"Please do."

He could probably recite the whole amendment from memory with some effort—he had a brain for this sort of thing, it's the reason he'd trained a lawyer before the Navy's bureaucracy. But that would take a long time, and it'd probably just upset the sovereign further. "It makes a very specific exception for the sale of equipment and arms classified for terrestrial army use only—no warships, spacecraft, aircraft, or nautical vessels—to the government of Novokhabarovsk, to be delivered to their capital world, Einsteingrad," he said, managing with the tricky names. It helped that he spoke Terran.

Kasara's blue eyes were open wide, shimmering like gems. "Please go on."

"Novokhabarovsk, you may be unaware, is a very small, new country carved out of space between the Pyotr and Einhorn Empires. It came about as a result of the overthrow of the Pyotr Empire's monarchy prior to the last war, and the failure of the Provisional Government that took its place. That government ejected and attempted to purge a leftist faction, the Social Democrats, from their nation and ultimately they took a part of it on the frontiers for themselves. Now they are a pariah state, hated by their neighbors and distrusted by the rest of Terran space in general. That they've lasted so long is somewhat surprising."

There was a knock at the door. "Come in!"

A very smartly-dressed aide in a double-breasted tunic entered and bowed deeply to her sovereign, who glanced back at her. Tomas snapped his fingers. "Come now, Her Imperial Majesty is a busy woman. Just bring the document," he ordered.

She presented an almost beautifully-printed and notarized white document, emblazoned with the Seal of the Prime Minister's Office, an exact copy of the enacted amendment for her review. Kasara IV took it and began staring at the long body of printed text.

"It's long been accepted in the Assembly of the People and the Assembly of the Empire that the continued survival of Novokhabarovsk is in our best interest. After all, should Einsteingrad fall, that will be it—there will be no undoing it. The Social Democrats, as their rulers call themselves, were almost scattered to the wind before."

"What are they like?"

"The Social Democrats? Well, they're a Terran political party who played a small part in the war. I would say they are most like our own political parties, including the conservatives, but that's 'leftist' by Terran standards. Except for their hatred of Terran monarchies, of course, but they'll take help wherever they can get it."

"I felt very strongly about the original law of course," she said, a little quietly. Tomas dismissed the aide with a gesture as she kept reading.

"Of course, it was a replacement for a very important law. Arms proliferation has been a major concern since the war ended, His Highness your father felt the same way," he replied, his voice also soft. "The amendment was to ensure that we obeyed both the spirit and the letter of the law, while making this particular exception."

He chuckled at the justification, in a very harmless, incidental manner, but immediately stopped himself anyway. The sovereign probably wouldn't appreciate his lame attempt at legal humor. _My son's the same way_.

Kasara IV's eyes were still darting back and forth along the document when she snapped out of the chair, legs straightened. The prime minister had a new thought. "Your Highness, I thought you might want to know about…"

"That'll be all, Mr. Koboro-Koboro," the sovereign chirped rather sharply, not taking her eyes off the document. The first indication of her intent to leave came when one of her ladies-in-waiting reached for the door to his office and opened it and without a further word, strolled out of the office, completely absorbed in the document.

"Good day, Your Highness," he announced quickly before clenching his jaw softly. … _know about the status of Clan-Clan_ , he thought. He received a notice from one of his own secretaries: the long-overdue travel permit had been approved, along with transportation arrangements.

 _No sovereign ever cares about the details for long anyway_ , he thought, sitting back down at his desk when the last lady-in-waiting left with a knowing, even smirking nod towards him. A lot of upper-class women and men were not impressed by him, with his dull-colored suit and general humility. Humility did not serve the Ctarl-Ctarl, he supposed.

Emperor Anton I certainly had not. He was the supreme big picture man, with very grandiose, even unrealistic dreams that he made sure were shared with all around him.

 _"The universe is ours, Koboro! They won't stop us this time!"_ That was the sort of thing he used to say. His sister and predecessor, Marianna IV, was different: she had a military mind and understood military minutia better than most, even if she kept that fact to herself. No wonder she'd been most at home during the two Terran Wars. If anything, Kasara IV, had a prodigy-like orientation for details. What other sovereign went out of her way to read laws? That was what lawyers were for. Certainly not her father, or her aunt, or her grandmother, or her great-granduncle who'd proceeded her in the Hashiyo-Hashiyo line. _Beautiful and a prodigy. How fortunate we are._

Another knock at his door, one clearly not of the Empress of all Ctarl-Ctarl. "Come in."

One of his legal clerks entered, Mr. Risley, a young man the same age as Her Highness. His face suggested he knew what had happened. "How did it go?" he asked, dispensing with the pleasantries.

"Our empress had a lot on her mind. Hopefully I gave her a little assurance."

"So you don't think this was just about the arms sale law, sir?" he asked.

He was actually very fond of Risley, an upper-crust lad of a better family then his own. Considering he'd come from the previous government, a junior clerk under Lord Zubayr and his deputy, probably to spy on Tomas himself. Originally, anyway. "No, I don't think so," he began in his calm, almost tired tone. "I think she wanted, in part, assurances that she was not being left out of the loop." He liked Risley enough to refer to the sovereign just by 'she' in his company.

"She can't attend every parliamentary subcommittee after all."

"God knows why Her Highness would want to," Risley muttered. "The Empress-Dowager didn't."

"Her Highness's mother was a woman racked by grief," the prime minister reminded him. 'Was' because she wasn't dead, but quite alive and probably much less full-of-grief since her eldest child ascended to the throne, ending her regency. "Parliament's not the place for a grieving widow."

Smartly, Risley said nothing. He was a sensitive, compassionate lad, he liked that about him. "So the empress didn't ask about Clan-Clan's daughter?"

"No she did not. I don't suppose she's forgotten it, you can never tell with prodigies. Her mind's always racing from one idea to another. The burden of genius I suppose."

"Genius, huh?" Risley said, wisely stopping there. On the street or in a newspaper he could criticize the sovereign however he wanted, there were laws that allowed that, but the Office of the Prime Minister was not a free speech zone. Without the Hashiyo-Hashiyo monarchs, Tomas would probably still be a junior MP, if that. Risley knew the limits, another reason Tomas liked him.

"So, what else do we know about this Lady Aisha- _slash_ -Captain-Lieutenant Clan-Clan?" he asked. More titles, always more titles.

"Goodness, where to start…"

* * *

 _Terms To Know:_

 **Einhorn Empire (Einhorn Reich) -** The smallest and most Europeanized of the four Terran states, located past the Pyotr Empire and USSA from Earth as shown on _Outlaw Star_ supplementary materials.

 **Hashiyo-Hashiyo -** The third dynasty of the Ctarl-Ctarl interstellar empire, technically the House of Hashiyo-Hashiyo. A little over two centuries prior to the story, it replaced the second dynasty in a bloodless coup orchestrated by the military elite.

 **Lou Enterprises** \- The large conglomerate owed by Fred Lou that deals primarily in arms sales, including small arms and personal weapons, and bankrolls much of the _Outlaw Star_ 's antics. They had a headquarters in the city of Hugo, a commercial hub on Sentinel III.

 **Oracion -** Mentioned in the final episode of the TV series and in passing in _Angel Links_ , a major world in the USSA (one of the four Terran Empires).

 **Sentinel III -** The adopted homeworld of Gene Starwind (himself a native of Earth, as mentioned in the final episode of the series), terraforming classification level-4 and mentioned possessing two cities, Locust and Hugo.

 **Social Democratic Party (Социал-демократическая партия)** \- The political party that founded the Novokhabarovsk Republic on the edges of Pyotr space. Prior to their split with the rest of the Pyotr government, they contributed ships and officers to the anti-Ctarl-Ctarl war effort.


	4. The Demilitarized Zone

**_The Immortal Empire – Episode 4: The Demilitarized Zone_**

A full day since Aisha's disappearance, things at Starwind and Hawking Enterprises hadn't gotten any more relaxed. Since dawn, Jim had been packing luggage for what he feared was going to be a long trip. Gene claimed he was doing much the same, ensuring the _Outlaw Star_ was ready to leave at a moment's notice from Heifong Starport. They didn't meet to discuss plans well into the afternoon.

"So, worst case scenario: Aisha makes it back to the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire before we reach her," Jim speculated, a pen in his hand.

Gene visibly shuddered. "If that happens, what's the plan?" He turned to Jim. "You _do_ have a plan, right?" he asked, his voice clearly implying that it was _his_ responsibility.

"Yes I have a plan!" he hissed. The two migrated towards the coffee table, clearing it off before Jim dropped a new stack of documents on it.

"It's actually not as bad as I first thought, the obvious disadvantages aside. I heard somewhere that years ago that a lot of humans used to live in the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire. I'll need to do some research, check the normal sources, but I have a feeling most of the information available will be coming from the Space Forces."

"Is that a problem?"

Jim laughed, touching the back of his head. "Nah, not really."

"Well, racing across the DMZ does us no good anyway. We'll need to determine her course off-planet and start from there. The Empire's pretty damn big, we need at least some idea of her vector, what course she's taking."

Jim took a cheap paper map from one of his pockets, unfolded it onto the table and drew a line from Heifong, past its neighbors, towards the galactic center. Between Heifong and the Sagittarius A, the very bright and very compact complex radio source in the center of the galaxy, was the whole Ctarl-Ctarl Empire. For a few moments, Gene studied the map with an unusual intensity normally reserved for large amounts of wealth, dire life-or-death situations, or very prominent female secondary sexual characteristics.

"Well?"

"Well what?"

"Are you gonna' tell me about the job?" Jim snapped at him.

Gene sighed. The focus was lost. "So, remember Novo-whatsitsname?"

"No-vo-kha-ba-rovsk," Jim said, slowly and carefully sounding it out. "Gene, if we're gonna' go there for a job, even if it is just to chase down Aisha, you're really going to have to know how to say the name, people are gonna' think you're some sort of cretin."

He grinned at him. "That's the beauty of it: we don't! The job is just to deliver weapons _from_ the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire _to_ Novo-whatever, not the other way around. We head directly for the depot world, hopefully find Aisha long the way, squeeze my eighty-thousand out of her, and then head back to deliver the hardware. It couldn't be easier!"

"And who's paying for all this meandering exactly?" Jim asked skeptically.

"Who else? The Military HQ on Einsteingrad," Gene replied, having no trouble with the capital's name by comparison. "They've promised a pretty sweet C.O.D. too, apparently not many outlaws are keen on taking jobs from them.

"You know there's probably a reason for that, right?" Jim reminded him.

Gene ignored the comment. "All goes well, we ought to come out with a net gain even before we get that eighty-thousand back."

"Yeah, or whatever's left of it."

"What was that?"

"Nothing, nothing!"

Towards the front of the office, they could hear the door opening. Gene looked up, thinking it might be Suzuka having returned from her reconnaissance at the Ctarl-Ctarl embassy or whatever she felt like doing, but it was Melfina back from classes for the day. His mood improved further.

"Welcome back."

"Thank you!"

Jim folded up the paper map. "Hey Mel! How were classes?"

The young bio-gynoid smiled almost cunningly at him—she knew he wasn't asking about her studies. Melfina had gotten back from her classes at Dailong University, one of Heifong's best-known institutions and home to its largest databank, but what she'd brought was genuinely her own. Still wearing her school clothes, she came in holding a large binder of some kind.

"Thanks Melfina, we can actually get started now."

Gene looked confused. Jim sighed. "Geeze big bro, you remember how to _track_ people, right? It's not like we weren't doing it for years on Sentinel III, for god sakes."

His older partner awkwardly laughed it off. "Sure, I was just playing with you. What have you got, Melfina?"

She beamed a little with pride, a rarity for her. "I went through all my photo albums and got every picture I had of Aisha," she explained, opening the book to a page selected at random. Sure enough, between two pages there were more than two dozen large photographs of the young Ctarl-Ctarl, though many were duplicates.

"Plus, these are all chemical photographs: high-resolution and hard to alter. We're lucky Melfina preserved them so well!" Jim added quickly.

"We're _lucky_ that Melfina took photography on as a hobby," Gene countered, not hiding the skepticism in his voice. "Hey, I remember this one!" he said before pointing at a particular photo.

"You oughta', it was just in orbit above us: the Thirteenth Annual Heifong Space Race! This was the pre-race party I recall." Jim's expression hardened. "As I recall, Aisha was a waitress there _again_ and tried to grab us _again_.

"Well, the food was good." A smile appeared over his face. "So was Aisha's butt in that striped minidress."

Jim and Melfina stared at him, and for once, even Gene turned red. It was apparent he hadn't intended to say that out loud. "Just kidding! That was a pretty fun night, huh?"

"Gene…" Jim began, shaking his head. Melfina giggled.

He was eager to change the subject. "Anyway, we've got to have enough here for potential witnesses."

"You have to remember, even out on the frontier, there are lots of people who've never seen a Ctarl-Ctarl before—and even if they had, they probably didn't realize it," Jim explained, alluding to the integration of Ctarl-Ctarl into mainstream human society, which was actually not that successful. He recalled his own first encounter with a Ctarl-Ctarl who wasn't an image in a history or a biology textbook—the waitresses at a party Gene held for something or another years ago, when they'd gotten their start, long before they met Aisha. "Not everyone remembers people just because they played grab-ass with them."

"And what does _that_ mean?" Gene demanded, angry at the accusation.

"Nothing, nothing! The point is, even if Aisha were in disguise, this out to help once I compile it into a dossier." He took photo album and closed it. "Is Suzuka onboard?"

Gene sighed. That had been his responsibility. "Not yet."

Jim made his best 'serious situation' face. "Gene, we _really_ need her in on this one. There were two people in this company with any tracking experience, and one of them _just fled the planet_."

"What about all that business about what we did on Sentinel III?" he fired back.

"Hanging out at the bars on a tiny Podunk planet, waiting for bounties to walk through the door _isn't_ the same thing, Gene."

Gene looked almost hurt by the suggestion, but Jim's face made it clear he was committed. "Let's focus on the task at hand: you're not gonna' let Aisha keep the money that was clearly owed to her. And for the first time, you've actually got an economical way of stopping her, apparently. Aisha's not going to be an easy person to track down, especially not if she knows we're coming. Let's just hope that she doesn't yet, or _your_ stubbornness is going to make _our_ lives a lot harder."

* * *

Sitting at the commander's station on the small, simple bridge of a merchantman—a civilian trade vessel, in other words—Aisha Clan-Clan sneezed.

" _Gesundheit_ , Lady Aisha."

Aisha scratcher her nose and sniffed. The sneeze caught her off guard almost as much as the navigator's response, sitting in front of her to her left.

"It means 'good health' in Einhorn, ma'am," the navigator explained preemptively.

"Oh." She checked the course displays on the primary monitor once more—they were still sitting at the Terran edge of the DMZ, just like they had been twenty minutes earlier, waiting for clearance to pass through. "Are they any closer to reviewing the ship yet?" she grumbled angrily.

"No, Lady Aisha, we're still waiting in line."

She grumbled a little more. The navigator went back to reading a paperback at his station. Aisha bristled—this sort of laxity was inexcusable in the Imperial Navy, but that really just meant that the officer would have had to stand at his station, looking board, until he was relieved before he could read a book to pass the time. And the freighter was not a military vessel—he wasn't even standing, but sitting at his station. She decided not to press the matter further, given the miserable expression on the face of the vessel's captain, one that had been there since Aisha boarded as a passenger for their return to the Holy Empire.

In contrast with the preoccupied navigator, it was difficult to convey just how unhappy Mr. Nubata Kunono, captain of the long-range trade vessel _Niburu Boribori_ , was at encountering _another_ Imperial official on Heifong. The fact that it was the _same_ official, Lady Captain-Lieutenant Aisha Clan-Clan was just the finishing blow from the Ctarl-Ctarl Embassy on Heifong, who made it clear their orders were those of the state, and that a veteran officer of the Ctarl-Ctarl merchant marine, _an employee of the Ministry of Trade and Industry_ , was in no position to reject them.

 _"This, this really can't be happening…"_ his first mate and navigator had sputtered upon hearing the news.

He held his head in his hands. _"Like you said the first time around, we don't have any choice, do we? We can't disobey the Empire."_

They probably shouldn't have been surprised that Lady Aisha didn't remember either of them when she boarded the _Niburu Boribori_ , though she did recall the ship itself: the vessel had a twenty-year career under multiple captains, reliably transporting priority cargo speedily between Heifong and the Ctarl-Ctarl trade hub Outreach, in the Outer Periphery. She wasn't happy either once she saw the ship's name on the outside of its hull.

 _"I can't believe this…"_ she'd whimpered, her head bobbing back and forth. The whole Heifong Space Race incident was not one she cared to relive, even if, she felt, her successful stratagem to sneak aboard the _Outlaw Star_ had been nothing short of brilliant. Naturally, she didn't remember the crew.

 _Back then, Gene told me the MacDougall Brothers were the key to finding the Galactic Leyline, the lying bastard_ , she thought now, long-suppressed memories from the back of her head raising the temperature of the blood. _How miserable was it to have Gene Starwind, the least reliable Terran in the universe, as my only lead on a government assignment!_

Another thought entered her mind. _But it was how I joined his crew, wasn't it?_ She felt a little better, if only for a moment. Barely hours after she had snuck aboard, they were under missile attack by the MacDougalls, and had lost two of the _Outlaw Star_ 's four Newton Reactors—a pretty awful turn of events before the fourth checkpoint in a space race.

"Captain-Lieutenant, why are you smiling? Is something amusing you?" the captain demanded quietly but firmly.

"N-Nothing!" she stammered out, her military posture returning. She didn't realize it, but her behavior was almost indistinguishable from her last time aboard the _Niburu Boribori_ , even if her objectives were different.

In the distance space beyond them stretched the Ctarl-Terran Demilitarized Zone: an uneven length of space that ran along areas of influence of three of the four Terran Great Guilds and their associated pirate clans, roughly 320 lightyears in length and varying in width between 25 and 50 lightyears. On the galactic west, it ended at the edge of Silgrian space, and the galactic east, the territories of Corbano. The Empire's borders with both species' areas of influence were normalized, then again, the Empire hadn't fought any wars with either of those people in recent memory. Aisha wasn't an academic genius, at least not anymore, but she understood the irony that the _demilitarized_ border of the Empire was adjacent to some of the most militarized areas in the universe, while the normal borders of the Empire just had a nominal police presence.

It also meant that all the trade traffic between Terran and Ctarl-Ctarl space went through a series of choke-points, like the one they were waiting at for their vessel to be inspected and granted permission to cross. She impatiently wrapped her fingers against the instrumentation in front of her.

"Has there been any further notice from border control?" she asked.

"No, Lady Aisha," Mr. Kunono replied dutifully. "You would hear so if there was, ma'am." He had a tendency of repeating the obvious as a sort of polite rebuke.

She gave an impatient sigh. The navigator next to him shuffled slightly, returning to the paperback novel he'd had underneath his station momentarily and reading it in front of her.

"What are you reading?" she asked finally, trying not to sound too annoyed.

He looked up at her. "Oh, an ancient Terran history of the founding state of the Einhorn Reich, Germany, Lady Aisha."

"Ger-man-y?" Aisha pronounced it phonetically.

"Yes ma'am, though in Einhorn it is pronounced 'Deutschland'. How the two words are related, I don't know." Keeping his finger on a page, he closed the book so she could see the cover.

"That's one of those spaceport history novels that they sell for about four wong per hundred pages, isn't it?" she asked, more than a little patronizing.

"Yes ma'am. But it was recommended to me by a colleague, specifically the passages dealing with the country's flirtation with racial politics." He opened the book up again. "There was a time on ancient Terra, at the very beginning of the Atomic Age, where the German government pursued a policy of creating a 'racialist state', on the notion that the 'national people' or _volk_ were spread across many borders. By uniting the so-called superior 'German blood', the people in charge at the time thought they could dominant all of Terra."

He gave a look like he had thought of something very clever. "Sound familiar?"

She glowered at him. "I was valedictorian of my high school. Of course I remember Imperial history." In short, when the first dynasty rose after more than five centuries of the _Dashiyo Koto-Koto Nara_ , the Ctarl-Ctarl's Warring States Period, their ideology came to dominate the unified planet. One of their cornerstones was that Ctarl-Ctarl interstellar empire existed because of the superiority of the Ctarl-Ctarl, as a distinct mammalian species, over their neighbors. Since there was no distinction between the Ctarl-Ctarl mind—from which philosophical and eventually political thought was derived—and the Ctarl-Ctarl body—from which biological and eventually military prowess was derived—that meant the physical being of the Ctarl-Ctarl, blood included, was sacred. This was technically still true, centuries later. The navigator's theoretical comparison was fairly obvious to any high school graduate.

"The Germans, long before they founded the Einhorn Reich, thought this would make them the most powerful nation on Terra, like the ancient Roman empires before them: the physical essence of their race among the Terran species," the navigator noted. "That was apparently their future goal: a pan-German Empire spawned from their particular country, at least according to this book."

"And it didn't go that way, did it?" she sneered a little. Foreign history was a weakness of hers, even though she knew those years touched on the one subject every Ctarl-Ctarl student knew about Terran history, the Terran Atomic World War. _I don't really know any more about the German Empire on Terra other than they lost that big war._

"No, it didn't. The German Reich appeared practically unstoppable for some time, but eventually they lost the war and were divided between the victors. This concept itself, this 'Nazi racial ideology' was consigned to history along with everything else, except what was useful to the victors, the United States and the Sov-e-yet Union," he explained. Whereas 'United States' was easily translate into Ctarl-Ctarl, he'd used the Terran loanword 'Soviet', which he had to say phonetically. "There were two things this German Reich did that the Einhorn Reich of today hasn't, most obviously: turned almost the whole world against it, and create an ideological dilemma between 'Germans' everywhere, and 'Germanic' peoples, and over the right to rule."

Even Aisha knew that for one reason or another, Ctarl-Ctarl history had ruled definitively on that subject. "There's the difference—all Ctarl-Ctarl everywhere, at least in the Empire, are biologically equal by virtue of being part of the same species, including those with a Terran parent. We may consider the physical body sacred, but we don't agonize about every drop of blood in our veins as to its origins like Terrans sometimes do, or whether your parents were from Home or the Outer Periphery. Every Ctarl-Ctarl, at some point, came from our homeworld." She crossed her arms triumphantly over her chest, as though she'd won some argument. _It's true. We Clan-Clans are famous because name belongs to warriors going back centuries, not because we had the virtue of being born in a good place when others did not. On the contrary, we probably have that privilege of living in the Imperial capital because of our ancestors' valor, wherever they came from._

The navigator nodded in agreement. "That's true, we're not as heavy-handed as they were. We don't kidnap emigrants who left for Terran worlds, or their descendants, we just disapprove of their decisions strongly. And it's illegal to discriminate against someone because their parent was a Terran."

"So long as they have at least one Ctarl-Ctarl parent anyway," the captain announced abruptly, to their surprise. He'd remained silent until now.

"Please excuse the captain, Lady Aisha. His father-in-law is Terran."

Aisha gave him a sharp look. "So?" she asked, masking any awkwardness with aggression. Ever since she was a small child, the treatment of Terran in the Holy Empire, particularly Terrans with Ctarl-Ctarl children, the former whom very likely possessed full citizenship courtesy of their spouses, was a controversial issue. She hated thinking about issues that complex, she thought she'd stop having to do that sort of thing after she finished school.

She looked at the sensor readouts of the local Terran patrol ships, long, blue-grey affairs that looked more at home floating in the ocean than through space, to take her mind off the matter. Her suppressed naval officer's education rose to the surface. "These are the nicest Terran warships I've ever seen."

"That's the general consensus on it, Lady Aisha," the captain pointed out.

"Of course they'd their best ships out on the border, but why?" she speculated. "Our own fleet can't see them from fifty lightyears away across the DMZ."

Neither officer responded immediately. "I imagine they're for the ships that _are_ passing through the zone, ma'am."

She blushed angrily. "I'm aware of that!" she snapped abruptly, feeling a little foolish. She was about to rant further when the speakers above her beeped.

" _Merchantman_ Niburu Boribori _, you are clear to submit for inspection. Proceed along the designated vector to platform nine-twenty-three and wait for docking clearance_ ," a calm voice announced in Terran.

 _Finally!_ "Ahead one-third, Mr. Kunono," she commanded.

"Like I need to be told that," he mumbled back at her, noticing that she had begun preoccupying herself with the controls at the command station where she sat, humming to herself cheerfully.

"Whatever you are thinking of, Your Ladyship, I would remind you that, as in the past, this vessel is armed with a single machinecannon. No Guriguri missiles, no Gambagamba torpedoes, and certainly no Gagagan energy cannons," he explained, using the generic terms for familiar classes of warship armaments.

"We certainly aren't equipped with anything like that," the navigator repeated in kind.

"And you call this an Imperial vessel," she sneered, not taking her eyes off the instrumentation. "Besides, I'm not going to attack the border patrol, that's insane."

"Then what _are_ you doing?"

She gave an unusual deep, unusually slow laugh, almost bellowing. "Oh, you'll see."

"That's profoundly worrying, Lady Aisha."

She slowed her laughing down to a chuckle. Actually, they probably wouldn't see—she was using the ship's computer to leave a little gift for the _Outlaw Star_ in the rather improbable event that they came after her. _Oh, I know it's a long shot, but if Gene Starwind turns out to be vengeful or stupid enough to come after me, I think I owe him a little gift._ Aisha broke out in more raucous laughter as her hands danced over the computer interface.

The navigator gave a long sigh and looked back at his own instrumentation. "They're certainly taking their time with docking clearance." He glanced at his wristwatch. "We may have to put this off."

Aisha's head jerked up at him. "What?"

The captain cleared his throat. "What he means is that we may end up giving up for the day. The Terran side of the border runs on a planetary schedule, at this rate we may end up waiting till 'tomorrow' when they reopen for further business…"

"What?" she snarled at them. "Tomorrow? What the hell does 'tomorrow' mean? We're in bloody outer space- _zona_!" she lashed out.

"Lady Aisha, in this situation we're beholden to the schedule of the Terran border officials, not our own," the navigator began.

"This is supposed to be a _fast merchantman_! You call this fast? So we had to sit in line and wait for some customs agent to get off his ass, and now you're just going to give up? And you call yourself a Ctarl-Ctarl vessel with that attitude? It's all wrong and…"

She stopped short. Both officers turned back to see her frozen in place, one hand raised in a martial fist just over her shoulder, her eyes open wide.

"Lady Aisha?"

"Captain-Lieutenant, are you all right?"

She didn't hear their inquiries, instead a long-ago conversation replaying in her head. _"What's the deal? You've given up? Somebody just blasted you with a couple of missiles, BANG, and you're going 'The ship's busted! We're stuck here!' So what's the deal? To a Ctarl-Ctarl, this attitude of yours is all wrong! To a Ctarl-Ctarl, it's about justice, courage, tenacity! With those three ideals, we'd never give up, we'd always do whatever it took to get the job done! You people don't have the tenacity or the guys to go swimming in the ether sea!"_

That's what she'd told the crew of the _Outlaw Star_ more than year ago. Despite the implication, that was not the motto of the Ctarl-Ctarl people, or even the Empire, but of the Ctarl-Ctarl Imperial Navy. THey were just some things she'd come up with on the spot. To the average Ctarl-Ctarl, the words didn't mean a great deal either. But the words had gotten through to _them_ , somehow.

Even more than that, she remembered Gene's response.

 _"Have some faith in me and come along for the ride, people! I can do this!"_

 _"Go for it! Don't lose to those bastards with missiles!"_ she'd cheered them on.

"Lady Aisha, is something amusing? You seem to be smiling a lot."

She blushed. "N-Nothing! You two keep your ears out for docking clearance _zona_!" she snapped.

* * *

 _Terms To Know:_

 **Corbano (or Corbono) -** The area of space (and likely home of a planet by the same name) in the influence of Corbonite species, galactic east of the Tenpa Empire and Kei Guild space.

 **Sagittarius A (Sgr A) -** The trio of related objects in the centermost area of the galaxy, supernova remnant Sagittarius A East, the minispiral dust cloud Sagittarius A West, and the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*. Their location and nature means they still remain observable exclusively by means of the radio detection. Alongside a few neighboring structures, they are claimed by the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire by virtue of mounting the most successful manned and unmanned expeditions into the Galactic Center during a pirate conflict known as the Third Succession War.

 **Silgrian Space -** The territory belonging to the birdlike Silgrians, galactic west of the Ban Guild and the USSA.

 **The Warring States Period (Dashiyo Koto-Koto Nara) -** An approximately six century-long period of unending warfare in Ctarl-Ctarl history, immediately proceeding the founding of the first planetary imperial dynasty, the Tomoyo-Tomoyo. Almost a fourth of all Ctarl-Ctarl perished as a consequence of war. The Tomoyo-Tomoyo nation, and its rivals, developed and used the most prolific pre-spaceflight military weapons and tactics, including the submarine, the armoured fighting vehicle and tank, the jet aircraft and the fission bomb, and shaped the future Ctarl-Ctarl Interstellar Empire.


	5. Vagrant III

**_The Immortal Empire – Episode 5: Vagrant III_**

Gene Starwind would never admitted it openly, but he relished the ritual of a spacecraft launch and insisted upon following it whenever he remembered to. His love of ceremony was certainly no secret to Jim Hawking at this point.

 _"Navigation data looks nominal. All clear here."_

 _"_ Engine output stable. You're clear for launch. _"_

 _"Thanks Melfina. Set course for the Vagrant System at the end of the Walkurein Shoals."_

 _"Yes, Gene, course plotted."_

 _"_ Outlaw Star, _launch!"_

It was still less than a week since Aisha had left the Heifong System, though to Jim, it felt much longer. "The sign of a guilty conscious," Gene called it. Jim told him not to be stupid, and they didn't speak of it in the three days it took to reach the borders of the Einhorn Reich.

" _We're coming up on Vagrant III in five…four…three…_ "

As Melfina counted down, the _Outlaw Star_ dropped out of sub-ether warp around an unimpressive, orange-brown world with a greenish tint under thick cloud cover.

" _Establishing orbit around the third planet orbiting the star Vagrant Prime_ ," Melfina announced over the cockpit deck speakers.

"Nice flying Melfina," Jim announced cheerily, glancing from his station. "Right on dime practically!"

" _Well, I like to think I'm not out of practice_ ," Melfina replied with a wink from her.

"It's no big deal, Jim," Gene chided him, propping his feet up onto his instrumentation as he often did and resting his head in his arms. "Melfina knows orbits better than she knows herself."

Behind him to the left, Suzuka laughed, sharp and piercing, rather abnormal for her.

"What's so funny?" a startled Gene asked.

"Look harder Gene," she said, pointing at their 12 o'clock.

Groaning, Gene craned his head forward and squinted before gasping. "What the hell is that?"

As the _Outlaw Star_ completed its transorbital maneuvers, Vagrant Prime—an orange-yellow dwarf star—shifted from their perspective just enough that part of it seemed to flicker and fade before warping abruptly—gravitational lensing. A massive black hole. When no one answered, Gene repeated himself, "What the hell is that?"

"That's Vagrant A. Vagrant Prime is actually Vagrant B. 'A' is an ancient black hole," Jim explained, one finger raised.

"How the hell is there a planet orbiting a black hole, much less three?"

"There are five, and that's the billion-wong-question, isn't it?" Jim speculated. "Vagrant A's tidal forces are actually very mild, and Vagrant B's habitable zone is so far out that the black hole might as well not be there. They must all be exoplanet captures, nothing could've survived Vagrant A's creation in the first place."

"Unless you believe the legends," Suzuka added in her usual calm.

"I'll pass on those."

Gene groaned quietly and put a hand to his head. "Whatever. "Gilliam, can you bring up data on Vagrant III while we make our approach?"

" _I thought you'd never ask_ ," the deep, patient voice simulated by the ship's artificial intelligence, Gilliam II, replied. " _Vagrant III. Terraforming level two, industry level six, public order level ten. Population sixty-eight thousand._ "

"I'm surprised the Social Democrats could get that many people to live there if they can see a black hole in the sky from the surface."

"I'm sure it's not that bad. Besides, they probably lived here before the whole thing got political anyway," Jim countered.

" _The world itself is quite ancient, at least eleven billion years old—it'd be classified as a 'warm terra', though it does seem to have particular bad and near-constant storms. It features six moons, the largest of which are three asteroids between one and three hundred kilometers in diameter. Additionally, it would seem to be tidally locked to the orange dwarf its orbiting, Vagrant A._ "

"Geeze, what a hell hole." He put a hand over his forehead. "Melfina, bring us in. Gilliam, bring up Vagrant III space traffic control."

As Gilliam II had warned, their landing site was an industrial spaceport on a small continent along the edge of the hemisphere facing Vagrant A, though still within reach of the massive, swirling vortex storms that seemed to consume that entire hemisphere—though at least it was raining water and not something else. A giant red star underneath the silhouette of a fist grasping a hammer identified the Novokhabarovsk Republican Government's Ministry of Industry, the company's clients and the owner of the complex itself. The Ministry spared the crew the trouble and sent two officials to board in person.

"Big smiles everyone," Jim said as they waited by the airlock. Gene resisted the urge to laugh.

The door opened and two humans in raincoats entered—they pulled off their cloaks to reveal they looked utterly mundane: a dark-skinned, dark-haired one and a light-skinned blonde with a military haircut. They both wore olive-drab tunics with red felt insignia with metal pins.

"This must be the legendary XGP-15A-II," the dark-skinned one announced, looking around the small room before looking back at the four of them. "Crew of the _Outlaw Star_ , I take it?"

Jim and Gene exchanged nervous stares, before the official laughed. "I really couldn't care less about the Space Forces' missing prototype, I just thought I'd have a little fun at your expense. Springfield, Deputy, Ministry of Industry. And this Senior Lieutenant Kazarian, Internal Security Troops."

The light-skinned one put on an olive-drab visor cap with a dark red band, just like his collar insignia. In doing so, he revealed the thin metal attaché case that was handcuffed to his left wrist. Gene was about to ask when Springfield spoke again.

"Is this your crew? It's more than I expected."

Jim looked extremely skeptical. "Really? More?"

"Most of the courier ships hired this season have been smaller outfits," Springfield repeated.

"Really? Who'd pass on a chance to see an actual black hole from the surface of a planet, between thunder clouds?" Gene jeered.

Springfield exchanged a look with Kazarian. "It's not a popular destination for most people."

"I'll bet," Jim muttered as Kazarian used a key to open the cuffs and presented it to Springfield. "Is that the payment to the Empire?"

"Affirmative—gold ingots, as they'll be expecting."

Gene and Jim exchanged glances. "Can we see it?"

Springfield gave a jovial laugh, while Kazarian stared ahead, looking disinterested. "No, no you won't. And I wouldn't try opening it either, the Ctarl-Ctarl will know if it's been tampered with."

"Please! We at Starwind and Hawking Enterprises are known for our professionalism and discretion," Jim explained before presenting Springfield an order manifest on a clipboard for him to sign, which he immediately handed over to Kazarian.

"So what can we expect of this depot world?" Gene asked as Kazarian meticulously read each line of the order manifest.

"It's the outermost ice planet of the New Avalon system, in the Outer Periphery of the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire, administered directly by the Ctarl-Ctarl Imperial Army. This is normal business for them, don't worry."

Kazarian returned the signed manifest to Jim, who took it appreciatively. "Thank you. So, since we're here…do you mind if we ask a few other questions about the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire?"

Springfield looked surprised. Kazarian looked immediately suspicious. "I'm sorry?"

"Well, as it happens—this'll be our company's first pick-up in the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire, and we wanted to know if there was…"

"Excuse me," Kazarian interrupted, speaking for the first time. "Am I understanding this correctly: you took a job from our largely-unrecognized national government to travel an alien superpower that you have no previous experience with and deliver to us...extremely illegal military contraband?"

Jim abruptly elbowed Gene, who managed to not break eye contact with the officials. "Ah…not… _no_ experience."

The two men burst out into raucous laughter, doubling over and holding their sides through their raincoats.

* * *

 _Navy Captain-Lieutenant Aisha Ayeshin, of the Clan-Clan Family. Age, twenty. Born in Hashiyo-Hashiyo 196. Valedictorian of her class in primary school at age sixteen, top graduate of the Central Imperial Navy Academy at age eighteen, promoted to lieutenant. Former commanding officer of the HIMS_ Orta Honehone, _military ambassador to the Blue Heaven Sector of the Tenpa Stellar Region, promoted to captain-lieutenant. Demoted to resident diplomatic officer after Hot Ice Hilde Incident with no change in rank. Submitted twenty-two reports concerning the prehistoric space artifact known as the Galactic Leyline._

Those were the prime minister's own notes on the strange young woman who was being shuttled back to the capital—the navy had already sent him entire volumes on Grand Admiral Clan-Clan's wayward offspring. Tomas Koboro-Koboro didn't really know who else was going to read them, if anyone. The Minister of Foreign Affairs already had her information on the whole matter, as did all of the sovereign's friends in the cabinet. He _planned_ to have a meeting with Clan-Clan in person to discuss the whole thing, but the admiral had been strangely…dodgy…about the whole thing, sending his sincere apologies for being called away for business with the 181st Royal Taskforce, the military fleet in orbit over the homeworld. The 'best' he could manage was tea later that day with his aristocratic wife, Lady Ayesha Clan-Clan.

He looked morosely at his desk, overloading with stacks of official documents. _I doubt Lady Ayesha will be pleased by this, even if it is all for her daughter_ , he thought as he began reorganizing everything so it at least looked less haphazard.

The speaker in his desk beeped. " _Your Excellency? Your son, Mr. Koboro-Koboro, has arrived_."

He looked over the stack in his hand. "Send him in." As had happened in the past, the prime minister's son was not quite as punctual as his father, but he tried, or at least, that's what he thought. Koboro-Koboro knew he coddled his son—his late wife had told him as much, and who better to judge so?—and that affected his judgment, but he didn't really change his behavior.

Georgy Koboro-Koboro entered the large officer nervously and the prime minister set down his papers on a small table in the corner, circled his large desk and quickly hugged him. Like his father before becoming prime minister, Georgy was almost universally known by his surname.

"My boy. How is your wife?"

"Fine…father." Despite his best efforts, Georgy still behaved a little nervously around his father. It was difficult to explain why. He wasn't genuinely afraid: while he might have the face of a murderer, as his critics charged, the prime minister had at least managed to establish himself as someone his son had no trouble confiding in, even in preference to his late mother. The prime minister's rise in fortunes had directly benefitted his son, despite the considerable measures against nepotism taken by the law, albeit in unexpected ways.

Georgy sat down at his desk, at the seat where the Imperial foreign minister or even the sovereign might sit, though the later almost never visited Tomas in person. "And she's in good health?" As a child, Georgy's wife had certain congenital defects in her heart, especially rare among the Ctarl-Ctarl, so rare that they had gotten her deferred from military service in her teens.

"Of course father," Georgy replied, almost sounding offended.

"I'm sorry, it's sometimes hard to tell from her," he apologized. Nowadays, Georgy's wife was a very vibrant woman, her past heart condition more of a faint memory. The fact that she and Georgy had not had a child yet was probably due to other factors.

The prime minister recalled something previously forgotten, an oddity for him. "Her Imperial Majesty sends her warmest regards."

Georgy blushed. "Of course." There was a reason for that blush. It had been years ago, more than a decade in fact, during the twilight of the reign of Marianna IV and immediately after his own election to office. The Empress-Dowager Mariah, a princess and sister-in-law of the sovereign at the time, had approached the new prime minister: she wanted a husband for her eldest daughter, the child Kasara Marin Bakr Novo Hashiyo-Hashiyo. She knew the new prime minister, riding in on a wave of popularity for the victorious postwar political coalitions, had a son the same age, and she wanted to make an arrangement.

On its face, it sounded odd. They were both still children. But there was logic behind her reasoning: they'd been done away with centuries ago for everyone else, but arranged marriages were invariably part of monarchy. The courtship rituals of their people, the years of nonexclusive relationships leading up to military service and then actual marriage after that, were not well-suited to monarchy. The princess wanted a good match for her daughter, and having seen the prime minister's son at his inauguration, liked him. Of course, she was still the sovereign's niece. If she changed her mind, absolutely nothing stopped her from breaking off the engagement at any time. Nor was anything official; the princess may have approached a few other families for the same reason too, though she claimed she didn't.

Tomas, and his wife, immediately accepted. The peerage system had been dissolved centuries ago. They had no idea what kind of military career Georgy would end up having, but unlike well-established families like the Clan-Clans, his prospects were not particularly grand. From a social standpoint, becoming nephew of the Empress (after all, no one thought Marianna IV would abdicate yet) was nearly as good Tomas' own election to prime minister, and guaranteed to him. If Marianna IV abdicated in favor of her elder brother, it was a chance to move up to the position of the next sovereign's son-in-law, a promotion if anything.

That's what happened. Marianna IV's abdication, while an ugly affair, directly benefited Anton and his children, and only raised Tomas' standing in their eyes, at least officially. Georgy of course had no say in it, nor did Kasara. As empress, Kasara's mother hoped that over ten years her daughter would grow to love the reliable-looking boy, as did Tomas and his wife. There was no way to force Kasara to marry but it was a workable plan. During Anton's short reign, Kasara was already turning into a very beautiful young woman. Georgy had been promised to one of the most beautiful, and easily the most eligible, bachelorettes in the Empire: an incredible break of luck. He was not so keen on it personally, but he took it in stride.

Then Anton died, and his daughter became sovereign, with her mother as regent. The unofficial engagement was terminated immediately. Just as planned, Kasara had actually grown quite fond of Georgy, though whether she was romantically or sexually interested in him was unclear. But even as the son of the prime minister, a young man with a very modest record of military service and of average, working-class means was not the sort to become Emperor-Consort or, even possibly, Emperor of the Ctarl-Ctarl. To Georgy, it was an enormous relief. Tomas shared the sentiment. Georgy's mother had already passed, though she probably would have been disappointed in the missed opportunity.

Still, it was a funny thing to joke about in retrospect. He still got a chuckle out of reminding Georgy that, circumstances being a little different, he might have been married to an astonishingly beautiful princess (had she not become Empress, Kasara probably would have been as attractive, if not more so) and been son-in-law to the sovereign. All because Empress-Dowager Mariah thought her sister-in-law Marianna IV would bequeath her throne to her unborn children eventually.

"I-I have those in order, please don't touch them," he announced. Georgy had noticed him rearranging the stacks of documents and had tried to help, then stopped in his tracks.

"Sorry father. Are these all…?"

"For Clan-Clan's returning daughter, yes. I have tea scheduled with her in an hour—which means she'll drop by, stare at me in that hostile manner of hers for five minutes, then leave." Koboro-Koboro cocked his head slightly. "Would you like to meet her?"

" _The_ Ayesha Clan-Clan?" Georgy asked, his eyes bugging out. "No, not really."

"It'd be a valuable learning experience."

"I'm…sure it would be."

The prime minister laughed at how much his son reminded him of himself. _But better looking_ , he thought as he sat back down. "I thought I might impress her if I know her own daughter better than she does."

"You read all this?"

He nodded, making it clear that it wasn't any real feat to have gone through the thousands of pages sitting in numerous stacks around him. "Actually, it covers all the Clan-Clan children, but mostly the youngest of the litter. Really not as much to her as you'd think."

"Really?" Georgy asked. "Because the stories…"

"Oh, the stories." The prime minister shook his head. "Risley almost hurt himself laughing. Our poor captain-lieutenant has gone through a _lot_."

Georgy assumed a foppish pose in the corner, grinning from ear to ear. "Try me."

He was about to humor him when there was another knock at the door, which swung open before he had a chance to respond. "Prime Minister, sir, Her Imperial Highness is here."

Georgy turned bright red in his corner. Koboro-Koboro cocked his own head. "Again? Another one of Her Majesty's surprise visits…?"

"Uh, no sir, it's…" The well-dressed secretary immediate jumped as a slender figure slid past her through the doorway, grinning much like Georgy had been though a few years younger. The secretary pressed herself against the large mahogany door, as though trying to make herself disappear into the woodwork, away from the newcomer.

"Crown Princess Fatima, to what do I owe this unexpected honor?" the prime minister announced, managing to recover quickly. Clad in the expensive, loose-fitting robes of royalty, an eighteen-year-old woman with dark chestnut hair and an undeniable swagger about her entered. She had much longer hair than the sovereign, and was a thinner and leaner in her build, even under her baggy robes, but otherwise born an unmistakable resemblance to the Empress of all Ctarl-Ctarl.

Grinning at his secretary for a second, Her Imperial Highness stopped directly in front of the door, hand on her waist, then surveyed the office around her, stopping at Georgy, who'd gone from blushing red to almost pale, like the color had leaked out his face via his legs and onto the expensive red carpeting beneath him.

"Master Georgy!" she grinned at him. "It's been a while, hasn't it?"

 _Not an inaccurate statement._ As a child, Georgy had known both Princess Kasara and Princess Fatima, as occasional playmates anyway. Now what remained was the expected level of social awkwardness between them, particularly between Georgy and the sisters. He stumbled on his words, trying to make small talk and failing.

"What brings you to the Office of the Prime Minister, Your Highness?" Tomas asked.

She turned to the Koboro-Koboro, still grinning, leaving Georgy to keep stumbling. "At the South Dorov Garrison Army review, I heard you've recalled Dawid Clan-Clan's daughter, Aisha." She sat on his desk smirking. "It's rare for you to take a personal interest like that."

"It was a request for Her Highness's sister," he said a little loudly, at both of them.

"Really?" she asked, leaning towards him, managing to grin even more while her eyelids narrowed. "I hadn't even thought of asking her."

"Oh, I'm sure you wouldn't have," Georgy muttered sarcastically. "Your Highness," he added after Fatima turned to her.

Fatima turned to the stacks of documentation. "Are those your files on her?"

"Not mine, Princess, the navy's." He kept an expression of perfect neutrality on his face. "Would you like to know something about her?"

Georgy rolled his eyes as the princess took a paper copy of Aisha Clan-Clan's ambassadorial appointment documents, complete with an outdated photograph of her in her officer's uniform. Fatima studied it silently while Georgy shot his father a warning glance that he in turn ignored.

"If you were wondering, we just received word she crossed back into Imperial space after some delay." Georgy paused while Fatima kept reading silently. "Would you like me to inform you when Captain-Lieutenant Clan-Clan lands in the capital?"

"I think that would suffice," she answered, finally tearing her eyes away from the document. "That wouldn't trouble you, would it?"

 _Ah, there's that sarcasm of hers._ "No, not at all ma'am. I'll have my son deliver the news if I'm not available for whatever reason," he said, keeping a straight face.

Fatima looked up at him from her seat on his desk and began grinning once more, when the door slammed open loudly and one of the royal ladies-in-waiting rushed in, flowing gown behind her, as another one of the prime minister's secretaries failed to stop her. She stopped directly next to Fatima and whispered something in her ears.

"Really, again?" Fatima asked, her tone very different—annoyed and bothered mostly.

"The Kata-Kata?" the prime minister hazarded a guess.

Fatima glanced at him. She didn't smile this time. "You're very well informed, aren't you?"

He gestured at the columns of documents positioned around his office. "Well, I do try. Should I expect you to be leaving for Deitros Carinos?"

Fatima gave a genuine-sounding laugh, her head arched back, before sliding off his desk and following the beautiful bodyguard out of the room without another word. "Thank you for your visit, Your Highness," the prime minister dutifully called out before plopping back down behind his desk and rearranging the various contents of his desk that Fatima had moved when she'd sat on it.

His son visibly unfroze and looked at him. "Why would you do that, father?"

"God of the Ctarl-Ctarl willing, both the crown princess and the sovereign will have long, healthy lives. So as long as you're working in this office, even if I'm not, you're going to have to learn to carry on with them, regardless of what the past might've been." He gave him his best fatherly look, his ears drooping. "Now you'd better leave unless you're willing to join myself and Lady Ayesha for tea."

Georgy's ears shot up and he immediately took his briefcase and bowed his head—a typical sign of respect for the prime minister and associated office—before disappearing from the office.

"You're welcome," the prime minister mumbled towards the door, having finally reordered contents of his desktop. He had no intention of reprimanding his son—the daily business of government, the Clan Clan issue, and now the Kata-Kata, they all took priority over doing something about his skittish boy. Georgy was a good boy anyway, and Risley and the others would keep an eye on him. He frowned and looked up. "The next time a member if the Imperial Family appears, would it be possible to have all the doors between the lobby and my office closed?" he asked aloud to no-one in particular.

* * *

 _Terms to Know:_

 **Empress-Dowager -** Also called the Empress mother, the official title for the mother to the sitting Ctarl-Ctarl sovereign (though not a former reigning monarch herself).

 **\- Emperor (or Empress)-Consort -** The spouse of the reigning sovereign who has not yet been formally inaugurated as emperor or empress. Even after the inauguration, the spouse does not assume any of the sovereign's political or military powers (which, like the title of sovereign, are typically passed on by absolute primogeniture). The constitution deters a spouse from being appointed successor, though they may act as regent (as in Empress Mariah's case).

 **HIMS _Orta Honehone -_** A _Nipopopolas-_ class deep space cruiser in the Ctarl-Ctarl Imperial Navy commissioned roughly twenty years prior to the events of the series, and the one (and only) command of Aisha Clan-Clan. After the last Terran-Ctarl-Ctarl War it was reassigned as a consular ship to the military ambassador to Blue Heaven. It appeared in a number of episodes in both the beginning and end of _Outlaw Star._

 **Kata-Kata -** Also called "Travellers", A socially-defined ethnic group and nation with the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire who are ethnolinguistically distinct but biologically identical. The original Kata-Kata were violently exiled out of civic society early in the First Dynasty and then eventually off-world entirely. They have the only de facto independent nation in the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire.

 **\- Deitros Carinos -** A gas giant in an inhabited solar system less than ten light years from the Ctarl-Ctarl homeworld. Its inhabited moon, Harvest, was home to the exiled Kata-Kata, who formed an anti-monarchist, pacifistic republic based around communal agriculture.

 **New Avalon -** A little-known system in the outermost region of the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire, near its border with the Terran states. It is home to the largest human-descended population in the entire empire, and retains its Earthling name for that reason.

 **Tenpa Stellar Region -** A crowded region of several hundred stars, home to much of the Tenpa Empire, and the southernmost border of the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire, as well as Blue Heaven.


	6. Pirate Alley

**_The Immortal Empire – Episode 6: Pirate Alley_**

Still sitting in the pilot's station on the bridge, Gene jolted awake after an alarm went off.

"Jim, what was that?" he gasped, almost falling from his chair. "…Jim?"

The alarm was indeed coming from Jim's station immediately forward of him, though Jim himself was absent. "Where the hell's Jim?"

" _He's in his bunk, Gene, remember?_ " Melfina reminded him from her glass cylinder. " _He said he had to do research._ "

The alarm tone went silent and Gene glanced to his left at Suzuka, who seemed utterly unresponsive as usual, reading some sort of novel. "Right. What was the alarm?"

" _Transmission from a sub-ether beacon—we've officially departed Novokhabarovsk space_."

"Then why the hell did it sound like an equipment malfunction?" Gene asked, knowing he was incorrect—there was a subtle difference between the tones' pitch and volume.

" _Maybe it was to get your attention,_ " Gilliam II chimed in.

"Gilliam, I don't want to hear it—wait, Jim said he was doing research? Research on what?"

As Melfina had said, Gene found Jim sitting in the small space of his bunk, persocom in hand and several similar ones arranged around him on the mattress. Gene wasn't even aware he owned that many of them, much less that he'd brought them along, though he conceded the sense of it: more than one had been destroyed in their adventures in past years, after all.

"What do you think I'm researching? The Ctarl-Ctarl Empire!" he snapped at him.

"That's not a bad idea idea," Gene reluctant admitted, thinking about the warning they'd gotten back on Vagrant III. "So, what'd you find out?"

"It's not that simple bro," Jim chided him. "The Ctarl-Ctarl Empire is the largest interstellar government in the known universe. People spend years getting university degrees in Ctarl-Ctarl studies all over space, trying to become specialists on them. I can't just expect to hack a few government servers and hope to get the quick notes on them! They're entire encyclopedias on the Ctarl-Ctarl!"

Gene dug around his right ear with a little finger. "Try, will you?" He looked at Jim. "Wait, hack? Hack what?"

"After we departed Vagrant III, once I had a network connection I hacked a few government information repositories I knew about, U.S.S.A., Einhorn, the usual places. Most of it wasn't even classified, just copyrighted, though I did look into some confidential info."

"Not bad," Gene noted. "At least you're comprehensive."

Jim gave a proud smirk. "Yeah, but that only solved part of the problem. There's a huge amount of literature on the Ctarl-Ctarl, and a lot of it is…well, pretty useless. The Liberty Bell University Press alone published forty-three books on Ctarl-Ctarl anatomy, but they really doesn't tell us anything we didn't know already."

"That they're meta-morphs that can turn into a vicious animal?"

"More or less. What we know about Aisha just from having lived with her is more useful. The problem is that when you go from scientific literature to political or sociological, a lot of it seems…" Jim paused.

"Seems what?"

"...erroneous. I mean, a lot of these books were blasted when they were published thirty or forty years ago as being politically motivated or otherwise biased." He extended a finger. "Some are flat-out unscientific. And the majority were published between the last two Ctarl-Ctarl Wars, so we can probably rule them out."

"Ctarl-Ctarl Wars?"

Jim put down the persocom among the others and crossed his arms. "Yeah, they were before our time more or less. Not back when they fought the Logans, more recent than that probably. Almost twenty years ago, the last Ctarl-Ctarl war saw a huge invasion across Tenpa space into the U.S.S.A., and almost reached Terra before the empires sued for peace. Before that, there were a lot of wars that were more or less confined to the demilitarized zone and those sub-ether transit routes, Smuggler's Run and Pirate Alley, you know them." Gene nodded and he continued. "In any case, the wars broke the back of the Space Forces and eventually led to them being privatized."

"I think I remember hearing about that as a kid."

"I wasn't even born yet," Jim lamented. "Since then, almost all academic research on the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire has been economic in nature which, frankly, isn't super useful given what Springfield and Kazarian described."

Gene sat down next to Jim, a genuine look of worry appearing on his face. Jim was almost a little surprised. "There's _got_ to be something. At the risk of saying something out-of-character, I _don't_ want to go running into the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire totally blind if I can help it. Don't forget the reason we signed up for this in the first place: to get back our money!"

"Then why'd you take this job?" Jim jeered.

"Jim…"

"Sorry, sorry, I know, not helpful." He picked up one of the persocoms, a newer one whose larger screen ran the length and width of one of the sides. "I've got two more sources I want to try before he reach the border: the first one is human-language Ctarl-Ctarl literature. Apparently the Ctarl-Ctarl publish a lot of their own literature in our language, even if they don't publish it in human space. Maybe it's for the human population living in the Empire?" he asked, rapidly tapping the screen with his thumbs, rather than the adjacent keyboard.

"'Explains how Aisha knew our language so well," Gene admitted. Aisha was fluent enough in it that Gene had to remind himself she'd never spoken to them in her native language. "But even if it's up to date, how accurate would it be? I mean, it's not like _our_ governments don't lie. Why wouldn't theirs?"

"I've considered that. At least it'll give us some general information," he admitted, handing Gene the pocket computer, which had brought up a cached copy of a network site belonging to something called the Imperial Household Agency, presumably part of the Ctarl-Ctarl government. At least it was in a readable language, and had pictures. "The other source might be better."

"Huh, and what might that-…whoa!" Gene exclaimed, almost dropping the computer.

"What? Did you find something?"

"Who's the babe?" Gene demanded to no-one in particular, as he kept fumbling with the touch screen. Jim groaned and took it by the other side and pulled. "Easy, Jim, this might be a little too much for you…"

"Oh, give me a break, that's a network domain belonging to the Ctarl-Ctarl government, do you think they're hosting pinups for your _perusal_?" he asked snidely.

"Well it looks like it."

"Give me that!" Jim demanded. Instead, Gene snapped it out of his hands and held it in a manner so the teenager could clearly see the screen: on it was a smiling, kind-looking Ctarl-Ctarl woman who was Gene's age with wavy, elaborately-done rosewood hair and long bangs. She had fairer skin than Aisha, but was darker than Gene, and was substantially less muscular than either of them, wearing an extremely expensive looking outfit: some kind of formal, floor-length, off-the-shoulder evening gown, satin white with ivory trim, awkwardly interrupted by a royal sash in dark green and a few different medals, including a giant one of a sunburst with a set of red gemstones in the center arranged in some kind of coat of arms. A diamond-encrusted tiara sat over her red hair, a much more elaborate version of what Aisha had worn as part of her 'uniform'.

Her unexpected, more human than alien beauty surprised Jim momentarily, then he figured out what had gotten Gene's attention: whether by design or coincidence, the gown's bodice barely covered the woman's large bustline, to the point where he couldn't picture her wearing a bra underneath, and in the center dipped to show a scandalous amount of cleavage. She was endowed enough to put Aisha to shame, leaving the medals and sash to be awkwardly arranged on her bust above her narrow waist. Her arms were hidden in over-the-elbow gloves, and clasping her hands together in front of her seemed to inadvertently showcase her chest.

 _Wow._ Blushing, Jim wondered if some sort of double-sided tape was involved, then shook his head several times. Gene was still staring at the image as he figured out how to use two fingers to zoom in on her chest further on the high-resolution screen when Jim smacked him. "Get a grip, perv!"

"Hey!" In his surprise, Jim snatched the computer back. "What the hell?"

"She's not some magazine bikini model for you to ogle, she's a foreign head of state! Show some class, you letch!"

"Head of state?"

Once more Jim groaned at his partner's ignorance. "She's the Ctarl-Ctarl _Empress_ , you lecherous idiot. Her name's right there," he said, pointing. "Her Imperial Majesty, Kasara Marin Hashiyo Bakr Novo-Novo, Empress and Sovereign of all the People of the Ctarl-Ctarl, Head of State of the Empire of the Ctarl-Ctarl, Supreme Commander of the Imperial Armed Forces," he said, carefully reading each line, one by one.

Gene smirked, still staring at the prominent curves of the monarch's chest immediately below her neck. "A title as long as her breasts are big. That's royalty for you."

"It used to be longer apparently," Jim noted, before turning red again. "Bro, she's the Ctarl-Ctarl Empress! Don't you get it?"

"Get what?"

"You don't think that _maybe_ if we go to the _Ctarl-Ctarl Empire_ , maybe you'll get in trouble for drooling over the _Ctarl-Ctarl Empress_? This is the same image they use for her official state portrait, it's probably everywhere. You have to imagine she has one heck of a cult of personality."

"Why is that _gravure_ idol dressed like Audrey Hepburn?" a voice asked from behind.

Both Gene and Jim turned with a jerk almost hard enough to fall off the bunk. Suzuka was standing in the bulkhead doorway, her head lowered.

"Suzuka! Great, what are you doing here?"

"I heard you two shouting over some nonsense," she answered plainly. "Jim, didn't you say you had another source?"

Jim tapped his palm with a closed fist. "Right! Here, check this out…I found a hidden server for the Space Forces' Ninth Expeditionary Fleet Headquarters disguised as a databank for the Heifong Chamber of Commerce. 'Must not have thought anyone would ever stumble on it, since their security wasn't great—then again, it looks incomplete, so maybe they just forgot about it."

"This is your other source?"

"It probably doesn't feature as much skin, Gene," Suzuka said, raising an eyebrow as Jim checked his different persocoms.

"Here we go! Like I said, it's incomplete—not data corruption, it's literally an unfinished draft." Jim squinted at the small screen and read aloud the title. "Data file: Observations on the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire by Vice-Admiral Alan Chandrasekhar."

* * *

The terms 'Pirate Alley' and 'Smuggler's Way' referred to largely interchangeable sections of space where the shared borders of the Kei, Acid-B, and Ban Pirate Guilds met closest, outside the meaningful spheres of influence of the legitimate Terran governments. They originally referred to specific sub-ether transit routes, but as the Terran military presence on that side of the border unilaterally decline, they gradually expanded to encompass any unpoliced areas reaching up to the demilitarized zone, of which there were many. Both legal and illegal regional traffic had declined as well, thanks to shifting economics, but there was still plenty of activity on that side of the border.

A massive cruiser, comparable in size with a smaller ship of the line in the Space Forces, had matched orbits with a more-massive wreck circling an uninhabited dwarf planet. Sensors were able to penetrate its passive military shielding: a scuttled Ctarl-Ctarl pocket battleship, the HIMS _Orta Korono_ , lost in combat with the Space Forces almost two decades earlier. The relative isolation of the dwarf planet and its dying star had kept it unmolested until now.

The investigating cruiser was in better shape, though well past its prime. Some hull paneling had been lost, replaced with hasty, economic repairs, and much of the original yellow paintjob had been worn out. For those familiar with it though, the distinct profile remained unmistakable: the _Shangri-La._

" _Trajectory and velocity matched Ron,_ " a very humanlike voice announced over the bridge's speakers.

The lone occupant of the bridge, Ron MacDougall, nodded. He was already in his space suit, prepared for any outside work. Without any hired hands, this sort of thing was necessary now. "Thank you Harry. How long until the sensor scan is completed?"

" _Should be three minutes._ "

"Good. Let me know if you can interface with the battleship's computer, though I doubt it."

" _Already checked, Ron, but I'll check again for you._ "

Ron smiled at the familiar smirk of the late Harry MacDougall on one of the video displays in front of him, then watched the data come up on others displays. "How are we on the sensors? We don't need to expect any unwelcomed Ctarl-Ctarl patrols paying us a visit, right?"

" _We're fine_ ," the voice assured him. " _The Ctarl-Ctarl Navy's smaller than it was twenty years ago. It's still the biggest military force under one uniform in the universe, but even then…huh, looks like some data's salvageable from the wreck. I'll see what I can piece together._ "

Ron nodded silently in agreement at the AI's argument. "Go ahead, but keep your eyes on the prize, Harry," he said, watching one of the displays be replaced with translated data from the warship.

" _Her Imperial Majesty's Ship, the_ Orto Korono, _date launched, commissioned, et cetera. Nothing worth much, though I am getting a message on loop, looks like a long range sub-ether transmission. Should I patch it through?_ "

There really wasn't much else to do but wait. "Go ahead, Harry."

Text popped up—originally gibberish, but a few seconds of computer processing cleaned it up.

 **The crew of the HIMS** ** _Orto Korono_** **offers its sincere congratulations to His Highness Prince Anton and Her Highness Princess Mariah on the birth of their second child, the Princess Fatima, and wish both her and her elder sister Princess Kasara good health and long lives on behalf of their beloved subjects.**

The text repeated over and over again, on a loop. Despite himself, Ron looked a little disappointed. Worthless. "Princesses Kasara and Fatima. I think I remember those names."

The AI took this as an inquiry. " _You probably should. This message is eighteen years old, nowadays they're the Empress Kasara and Crown-Princess Fatima, the rulers of the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire._ " Another image was brought up, this one from a few site of two women dressed in elaborate, androgynous-looking brown robes under heavy brown tunics with long sleeves and tall, mitre-styled hats. Both wore large medals around their necks and dark green scarves hanging from their shoulders. Despite their identical wardrobes the two women did not look related—the hair color and styles, complexions, even their heights and what little detail you can make out under those heavy robes looked different. The only common trait they shared were their large blue eyes and the unique tapered ears of the Ctarl-Ctarl.

Ron guessed the taller sister was the elder one, though he didn't particularly care either way. "Any word on what we came for?"

The image vanished, replaced with schematic diagrams. " _I've narrowed it down to three torpedo tubes. The other five look like they must've been destroyed when the Ctarl-Ctarl abandoned their ship, the first thing they'd do is destroy the torpedo magazines._ "

"You think they tried to destroy those three as well...what, the explosives didn't detonate?"

" _That's my theory anyway._ "

"So you're saying that I'm going to have to personally check the remaining intact torpedo tubes for demolition explosives and neutralize those as necessary, so we can remove this thermonuclear torpedoes for salvage per our contract?"

" _Well, it wasn't supposed to be an easy job, Ron, but yes, that's what I'm saying_ ," the voice said, almost chuckling.

Ron laughed outright. "I wouldn't expect any less. After all, we're—" he began before catching himself. " _I'm_ Ron MacDougall, the most dangerous Outlaw alive."

" _You know it, Ron_."

* * *

 _Terms to Know:_

 **Ctarl-Ctarl Wars –** A blanket term for the century of on-and-off warfare between the Earthling Empires of humans and the unified state of the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire, beginning earlier in the Toward Stars Era. Though the first full-scale military conflict fought by Earthlings against another species, it was actually the last of the great wars fought by the Ctarl-Ctarl, preceded by a series of wars against the Lorgans and the Sith, two other sapient species. The last war ended with the unconditional surrender by Earthlings, or Terrans.

 **\- Lorgans –** A nonmammalian sapient species described as gastropods or slug-like. The Lorgans possessed a large empire of loosely-affiliated states prior to an invasion by the more numerous Ctarl-Ctarl, and were scattered across the galaxy in the ensuing wars. Their inhuman biology and behavior makes them difficult for any mammals to relate to in particular.

 **Kei Pirates –** Also known as the Great Kei Pirate Guild, the largest of the four major space pirate syndicates who served as the primary political organization of human-occupied space in the early Toward Stars Era before the maturation of the major empires into modern states. The infamous 108 Stars (also known as the 108 Suns) and the Anten Seven represented the elite corp within the Kei Pirates.

 **\- Acid B Pirates –** Also sometimes called "Asteroid B" , a smaller pirate guild whose territory was squashed between the Ban and Kei Guilds, as shown in _Outlaw Star_ supplementary materials. Notably, it accounts for much of the territory of the USSA, and shares joint "custody" of Earth (or Terra) with the Kei Pirates.

 **\- Ban Pirates –** Second only to the Kei Pirates, the Ban Pirate Guild dominated Heifong and the neighboring space.

 **Gravure Idol (グラドル) -** A variety of pinup model typically found in magazines and video distribution, common throughout human space but particularly popular in the USSA and Tenpa Empire, involving shapely women in enticing lingerie or swimsuits, rather than actual nudity. Usually human, though many Ctarl-Ctarl émigré became famous "idols". In _Outlaw Star_ , one of Gene's favorite pastimes is "reading" pinup magazines.

 **Liberty Bell –** One of the earliest-settled worlds within the USSA, and its original capital. Also the name for a gang of USSA expatriates operating on Sentinel III.

 **Ninth Expeditionary Fleet –** Originally the most powerful fleet in the Space Forces, it was completely devastated in the last war with the Ctarl-Ctarl, but did maintain much of its terrestrial infrastructure, including headquarters and naval yards, after the war.

 **Pocket Battleships –** An older classification of warship in the Ctarl-Ctarl Navy, "pocket battleships" was the human nickname given this variety of large cruiser thanks to its battleship-class armament, including heavy energy weapons and large silos of thermonuclear torpedoes.


	7. The Outer Periphery

**_The Immortal Empire – Episode 7: The Outer Periphery_**

As it had been two or three hundred years earlier, space travel remained a largely boring, tedious pastime, punctuated by terrifying excitement when things went wrong. Even someone as immature as Gene Starwind was prepared for that, with a painful memory of what happened when things went wrong for spacers left in his childhood. He might complain, but he wasn't opposed to boredom.

What he was opposed to was being taught.

"Come on, Gene, you're not doing anything else. We might as well try and be constructive." Jim Hawking glanced over his shoulder. "You too, Suzuka. Unless you can prove you took informative jobs in the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire and didn't, you know, get killed."

Suzuka raised an eyebrow.

Nonetheless, leaving Melfina on the bridge the three of them congregated in the main hold, where Jim had assembled all his notes and persocoms, taping the former to the wall behind him.

"Jim, isn't this…a little much?"

"Oh, I'm not even started bro." Jim came around the corner, wheeling with him a small, dark green wooden board framed and installed into a wheeled rack.

Gene's eyes bugged out. "What...the hell…is that?"

"I'd like to know as well," Suzuka added, not bothering to disguise the surprise in her voice.

"What, none of you people ever seen a blackboard before?" Jim asked triumphantly, pushing the board back and forth on its squeaky hinges. With his other hand, he reached into his pocket and produced a handful of white chalk, set some of it down and used the remaining piece to begin writing from the top of the board downwards, standing on his tiptoes in the artificial gravity.

"So, what's the 'Sacred Realm of the Hashiyo-Hashiyo Nation'?" Gene asked.

Jim answered as he chalked. "That's the official name for the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire—apparently, the Ctarl-Ctarl have had three dynasties with different names. Hashiyo-Hashiyo is current one."

"So they change the country's name when the dynasty changes?" Gene asked, confusion creeping into his voice.

"There's probably a reason everyone, themselves included, just call it the 'Ctarl-Ctarl Empire'. You could probably think of that full name as more of a geographic title for specific purposes." He paused and moved slightly. "Speaking of which…"

Jim began sketching out a few amorphous blob-like shapes in the middle of the board, before making small dots with circles around them in the center and edges.

"So why doesn't Melfina have to go to this class too?" Gene asked impatiently.

"What makes you think she isn't?" Suzuka questioned quietly.

"Melfina?" Jim asked aloud.

" _I'm here, Jim,_ " her voice came over the speakers. Gene rolled his eyes.

"So, the empire controls a large portion of space directly that is smaller than what we would call 'human space', all those countries and the great guilds combined. Their sphere of influence, on the other hand, reaches from the local Orion Arm and through the Sagittarius Arm, into the Galactic Center, where the empire periodically patrols but doesn't actually have any colonized worlds. On our end, that includes Corbano space and some parts of the Silgrian frontier." He pointed at the middle of the blob. "Their capital is here, Ctarl-Ctarl Prime, which is just the human name for it."

He moved his finger towards the bottom edge. "New Avalon, a majority human world, is here, on the edge of their empire, what they call the 'Outer Periphery'." He gave a dejected look, he crossed out the world. "The system is also home to a military depot where the Ctarl-Ctarl have left a bunch of their obsolete guns and ammo, apparently. But there's no reason to think Aisha could go there."

"So we think she'll go to the capital?"

"We better hope so. Because the empire has more than a thousand populated worlds in it, and if she doesn't go to the capital, good luck finding her without some sort of press conference," Jim groaned and turned towards them, opening his eyes as wide as possible. "Hey, _Outlaw Star_ , I'm over here! Come get me- _zona_!" he cried, poorly imitating Aisha's voice and inflection.

"Sarcasm really doesn't become you, James," Gene replied.

Suzuka nodded. "For once, I agree with Gene."

" _The point is_ we're still in a lot of trouble potentially, which means we need to hedge our bets and take advantage of the most important organization there is."

"You mean the Ctarl-Ctarl government?"

"Bro! You've been paying attention!" Jim beamed, on the verge of crying. Gene shrugged and he continued. "The way I see it, and I hate to do this to Aisha but I don't see what choice we have, if we make it known that she was part of our crew, the Ctarl-Ctarl government will mediate and keep her from running from us to avoid some sort of embarrassing incident."

Jim paused. "That's what I'm guessing anyway. Have I mentioned what a stupid idea this was just over a couple wong and…GENE, PAY ATTENTION!"

"Huh, yeah, I'm listening!" Gene quickly explained as Jim taped a sheet to the edge of the blackboard.

"We have a printer?"

"I'm still surprised we have a blackboard," Gene confided in Suzuka.

Jim groaned. "See this? This is who I'm talking about: this is Tomas Koboro-Koboro, the prime minister of the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire." One the sheet was a printed portrait of a government official in civilian dress, and Jim rolled the blackboard up to the two of them, as if to compensate for the sheet's small size. "He was elected back in Hashiyo-Hashiyo 204, which roughly equals Toward Star 148, and he's been in office ever since."

Suzuka extended a figure. "I've heard of this man before."

Jim looked stunned. "Really? Wait, don't tell me it was a job, that someone took a hit out on him…" he began, whining towards the end.

Suzuka smirked. "Hardly. If I'd taken such a job, this prime minister would be dead. But I can say that he's also one of the most protected people in the universe, no less so than the Tendo King. Ergo, I wouldn't have taken such a job."

"I guess that makes sense," Jim conceded. "Even out of the reach of an ultra-class-A assassin, huh?"

She didn't answer and Gene continued. "Anyway, he was the socialist candidate for prime minister and served for the last three monarchs."

"Three of them?" Suzuka asked suspiciously.

"Nothing like that, you need to stop thinking like assassin, Suzuka," Jim teased her politely. "He was elected right before the sovereign before last, Empress Marianna IV, who abdicated. Then Emperor Anton I, _her_ brother, was killed in an accident while on holiday. The current sovereign is _his_ daughter, Empress Kasara IV."

He gave a nervous laugh. "I'm sure it's just been a run of bad luck. I doubt he's nefarious or anything, I mean, just look at him…GENE!" he snapped.

Gene jerkily looked back, pulling a finger out of either his ear or his nose, Jim just missed it. "I'm listening!"

"No you weren't!"

"I was too!"

Jim ineffectual punched the back of the blackboard. "Damn it, Gene! How about you try and stare at this picture with _half_ the intensity you were staring at Empress Kasara's boobs with, huh?" Jim taunted him, pointing

"Oh, I don't think that's gonna' happen," Gene muttered skeptically, standing up and looking at the printout nonetheless. Though a little detail was lost by the whatever old second-hand printer Jim had dug up for the _Outlaw Star_ , the image of Tomas Koboro-Koboro was adequately clear: an adult, older than Gene but not quite having reached middle age, that interminable age Gene always remembered his own father being the last time he'd seen him. He was rather thin and lean under his suit, not at all muscular like Aisha, who had a swimmer's physique at minimum, with a stern, tense-looking face and very well-defined wrinkles. His hair was a charcoal-grey, with moderately bushy eyebrows, and his nose was big by Ctarl-Ctarl standards but small for a human, with a few indentations that would've looked more at home on an older man, though his moderately-dark complexion helped hide them. A pair of small, grey, well-protected eyes stared out from under those eyebrows, no-nonsense but not necessarily threatening.

Like his monarch, he was very human-looking, though unlike her, exceptionally plain: his long tapered ears were his lone alien trait. When combined with his suit, a modest, dark-brown three-piece affair with a watch chain hanging from a pocket, he looked like he'd never had an amusing day in his life and about as interesting as the printout that bore his appearance. Above all, he looked quite harmless, like the sort of man you might see behind the desk of a hotel, or a modestly successful lawyer. _Not even a mafia consigliere_ , he thought, reminded of a number of U.S.S.A. mobster movies he'd watched when he was younger.

"So this is the guy who actually runs the government, huh?" Gene asked thoughtfully.

Jim shrugged. "Yes and no. According to the Space Forces' unpublished reports, the prime minister is just a mechanism to execute the sovereign's will and handle the daily business of government. All the power is supposed to be either in parliament or in the sovereign. They've used that system for almost five-hundred years now."

Gene whistled. "That's a long time."

Jim nodded. "Probably why they call it the 'Immortal Empire', instead of, well, the other thing."

 _You really are an immortal Ctarl-Ctarl!_ Gene's words from almost two years ago rang in his head, told to Aisha the day they'd met, shortly after he'd shot her with a caster shell. "Well, if the Ctarl-Ctarl are anything like the everyday assassins that Aisha was, I can't imagine their emperors live that long, immortal or not."

"Empresses."

"Huh?"

"Usually the ruler, or 'sovereign' is a woman, like, more than sixty percent of the time, though there's nothing that prohibits males from inheriting the crown. And according to this, a Ctarl-Ctarl sovereign hasn't been assassinated in more than three hundred years."

Suzuka smirked. "I told you, but don't listen to the professional assassin."

"Three _hundred_ years? What the hell are you reading anyway?"

"This? It's that unpublished naval manual from the Space Forces I keep telling you about, the one I hacked before our last jump. It was written by that Space Forces admiral, Chandrasekhar." He showed the two his persocom needlessly, as its small screen couldn't be read at that distance anyway. "He was some kind of military envoy who lived in the empire for many years and was supposed to write the latest manual, until…"

Jim trailed off and Gene stared at him impatiently. "Until what?"

"Well, uh…" he began awkwardly, putting his hand over his head. "…then he just stopped. The updates stopped coming in a few years ago. Which is a shame, because they were the best reports the Space Forces had I bet."

Gene and Suzuka regarded him with identical skeptical stares. "Come on, who cares about some dead admiral anyway! We're trying to figure out how to find Aisha after all!

* * *

Aisha Clan-Clan sneezed again.

" _Gesundheit_ , Lady Aisha."

Aisha stared at the navigator of the _Niburu Boribori_ and rolled her eyes. As it happened, crossing back into Imperial space from the demilitarized zone was no more exciting or life-changing than leaving the Tenpa Empire had been, to her disappointment. The daily life on the ship hadn't really changed either.

"I better not be getting a cold," Aisha complained to herself, scratching her nose for a second. She glanced around the bridge, empty except for herself, the navigator, and Captain Kunono. After a few seconds her mind was made up. "I'm going back to my room, if…"

"Lady Aisha, we're getting an incoming transmission, military priority."

"What?" Aisha snapped.

"It's for you, ma'am," the navigator said, his voice implying it was obvious.

"Put it on the main screen!" Aisha ordered, before immediately backpedaling. "Wait, no, I…"

"What, Lady Aisha?"

She stared at the two civilian merchant marine officers. Military protocol had taken over: unless specifically indicated, as in the case with confidential information, all military priority transmissions to a ship were taken in company of the bridge, and any officers and crew manning it—in the case of this rather pathetic vessel, two officers. But technically, Aisha was not obligated to obey military decorum on a civilian vessel, it was just what she was used to.

 _What if it's something embarrassing? What if I've been demoted again, and this is the whole point I was recalled. But that doesn't that seem a little extreme, calling me back to the empire after almost two years just to demote me again? I mean, how much lower could I go in the first place? They couldn't just make me to a sailor, could they? Can officers be demoted to enlisted women, is that even a thing? Oh no, oh no…_

Aisha's compounding sense of dread manifested itself on her face. "Lady Aisha?" the skipper repeated.

"I'll take the message privately! No, wait, that wouldn't be proper! Wait, _don't_ put it on the screen," she cried out. "Put it on the screen!"

"Excuse me, ma'am…?"

"I said put it on the screen!" Aisha snapped angrily. This time, the navigator began tapping his control console before she could change her mind again.

"Beginning message decryption!"

The forward viewscreen changed seamlessly from a field of twinkling stars in the Outer Periphery to a neutral dark blue computer screen, on which an unfilled white circle appeared as the decryption process began. Immediately, she slammed her right hand against console in front of her, a scan of her complete hand print serving as the key. The circle began to fill in a clockwise as the message decrypted.

One area where Terran technology hadn't lagged behind, even Aisha had to concede, was interstellar communications, especially the interception of them. The interception technology available to non-governmental private entities, in particular ships belonging to outlaws and pirates, was on par with the standard technology used by the Imperial Navy. That sort of equipment would've never been made available for private use in the Empire. Thus for long-range, sensitive communications that would pass through foreign space—like the order from the regional governor that had dismissed her from her post as military ambassador in the Blue Heaven Region for the humiliating rank of resident officer—an untraceable, secure alternative was used: comm cubes. Comm cubes were marginally cheaper, reasonably reliable, and most importantly, completely secure provided the physical cube itself remained in safe hands. It was also rather slow and tedious compared to FTL communications, and had to be sent by courier.

They were also one-way messages, something Aisha—used to person-to-person communication both on planet and in space, tended to forget. The screen flashed and a line of text in Ctarl-Ctarl appeared, underneath a modified version of the Hashiyo-Hashiyo Dynasty's coat-of-arms.

 **From the Office of Her Imperial Majesty's Prime Minister, the right honorable Lord Tomas Koboro-Koboro, MP**

Even the two men in front of her looked a surprised by the message's origin. Aisha, on the other hand, snapped into military posture, arms flat at her side, chest stuck out, chin raised and jaw clenched. The blue screen immediately vanished, replaced by a man her father's age wearing a plain-looking suit in lieu of a military uniform.

"Your Excellency, sir!" she cried out, standing at attention. The prime minister was not the commander-in-chief, that was reserved for the sovereign, but he was the chair of the Imperial War Council—it was a distinction Aisha, even as a school valedictorian and a military officer, wasn't terribly clear on either. She assumed they were often largely interchangeable.

" _I am speaking to Aisha Clan-Clan, formerly resident officer of the neutral settlement Blue Heaven in Terran space_ ," he began, very carefully and calmly enunciating his words, as if to ensure there could be no confusion over who he meant to address. " _As you have been recalled from that posting, I'll simply address you as Captain-Lieutenant Clan-Clan._ "

"Yes sir! It's an honor to meet you, Your Excellency!" Aisha shrieked.

"Lady Aisha, this isn't a communications channel, this is a one-way communique, like a comm cube," the skipper pointed out. As they spoke, the message continue naturally, uninterrupted, with the speaker's face taking on an almost passive but still sincere look.

" _First, I would like to welcome you back to Imperial space, Captain-Lieutenant, for your long and difficult service across the border. You may not be aware that I am acquainted with both your mother, Lady Ayesha, at court and your father, Grand Admiral Clan-Clan, whom I have no doubt will be extremely grateful to have their daughter returned to them. Next, I would like to clarify your itinerary: now that you have returned to Imperial space, your cousin, Lady Kalin Clan-Clan, has been given permission by the Imperial Navy Fighter Corps to ferry you across our holy realm and back to the homeworld, which I'm sure you'll be happy to hear._ "

Aisha was literally trembling with excitement. "That's really wonderful news, Prime Minister, sir!"

"Again, Lady Aisha, it's not an open communications channel…"

" _Finally, before I take up any more of your valuable time_ …" Though there was no trace of sarcasm in the minister's voice, this elicited a quiet snort from the navigator, whom Aisha shot daggers at from her eyes, "… _I wanted to convey Her Imperial Majesty's invitation to come to court once you have returned to Home. Regardless of plans for when you return to the homeworld, I would strongly recommend you make yourself available to Her Imperial Majesty's company as immediately as possible. Her Highness is particularly curious about your activities in Terran space over the last year and would like the opportunity to discuss them in person._ "

Holding back the urge to roll his eyes further, the skipper glanced over his shoulder to see Aisha trembling at her station, ears twitching. One the screen, the minister casually glanced at someone off-camera. " _Of course. Lady Aisha, please make your return to the capital as quickly as you can manage, put your affairs in order, and make yourself available to Her Imperial Majesty. Should you encounter any issues do not hesitate to contact my office. Good day._ "

The message ended abruptly. Aisha was still trembling, tears welling up in her eyes, making both merchant marine officers very uncomfortable. If they could leave the bridge then, they probably would have. The navigator cleared his throat loudly and spoke. "Lady Aisha, while our own course is set for Outreach, we will be able to drop you off at any of the military formations along the way, from where you can contact your, er, cousin in the Fighter Corps."

No response. "Lady Aisha?"

Aisha continued trembling, right hand balled up into a fist, still teary-eyed but starting to smile. For the first time, she knew why'd she'd been recalled, even the others could speculate that was the case despite doing their best to ignore her. She looked so overcome with emotion that neither of them wanted to interrupt her.

"Keep an eye out for _any_ border patrol squadrons on our way to Outreach," the skipper whispered his navigator. The sooner they got Aisha Clan-Clan off their ship, the better.

* * *

 _Terms to Know:_

 **The Clan-Clan Family –** An ancient and storied military family in the empire that can allegedly trace its roots back to the Warring States Period.

 **\- Ayesha Clan-Clan –** The Clan-Clan family matriarch, as a youth she served in the military special forces before taking a place in court and starting a family. She has two sons and a daughter.

 **\- Kalin Clan-Clan –** Daughter of Lady Ayesha's younger sister, a naval fighter-bomber pilot.

 **Hashiyo-Hashiyo -** The third royal dynasty to rule over the Ctarl-Ctarl's interstellar empire. It ascended in a "bloodless coup" that removed the short-lived predecessor dynasty, the Notok-Notok. Empress Kasara IV is a biological descendant of its founder, Lena I. The Ctarl-Ctarl calendar is based on the beginning of this dynasty (rather than the current sovereign).

 **Office of Her Majesty's Imperial Prime Minister –** The head of the Imperial government whom, alongside the Imperial cabinet, are collectively accountable to the sovereign, parliament, and the empire itself. The head of government is without doubt the second most powerful leadership position in the empire, and the most influential elected office in the universe.

 **Socialist Party of the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire –** One of the great many established political parties in the empire, which having entered into a coalition with two other leftist parties, earned a commanding majority in the lower house and a strong plurality in the upper house after the general election in Hashiyo-Hashiyo 204; as such, its candidate for prime minister was appointed to the office. Considered a radical rather than conservative party, its platform appealed to postwar Ctarl-Ctarl voters.


	8. Sub-Ether Space

**_The Immortal Empire – Episode 8: Sub-Ether Space_**

"Gene, we're about to drop out of sub-ether warp back into real space."

Gene Starwind didn't bother opening his eyes as Jim Hawking stood up by his station on the bridge. "Gene!" he repeated.

"I heard you Jim, relax!" He finally opened one eye as Jim sat back down at his station. "Didn't you say that traffic at this checkpoint on the border was so bad it can get backed down for days?"

" _Gene!_ "

That got him to open both eyes, as he glanced around the bridge, then back at Melfina. "What is it, Mel?"

In her tank, Melfina was smiling. " _You actually paid attention in class!_ "

Gene stared at Melfina gloomily for a few minutes before turning around. "Great, Melfina's got a sense of humor now. This is your fault, Gilliam."

" _I really don't understand the implication of that…_ "

"Anyway, Jim, you said so yourself—Aisha might still be stuck at the border waiting through customs. That'd save us a lot of trouble."

"How, exactly?"

Gene raised a finger. "Use your imagination, James. While we're waiting to be processed, _you_ hack into the main computer for the customs station and check for on their lists. The Ctarl-Ctarl Empire's obsessive bookkeeping does our work for us!"

Jim looked at him unimpressed. "Gene, it really doesn't sound like you've thought this through."

He stared at him, apparently confused. "Whaddya' mean? I got us a job, didn't I?"

"Yes, you did, and to be honest I am impressed by that, even if it isn't a great one."

"So what's the problem?"

Jim frowned. "You still don't think this is a little extreme? Going all this way just to stop Aisha…"

"Just?" Gene asked, leaning out of his seat.

"Fine, fine, I get the point!"

In her glass cylinder, Melfina opened her eyes. " _Returning to normal space in three…two…one…_ "

Gene at least managed to sit upright at his station as the normal starfield appeared before them. Squinting, Jim could make out a clearly artificial line of lights in the distance—the artificial space stations and asteroid platforms of the Earthling side of the Demilitarized Zone.

" _Putting us on an approach vector to next available transit point._ "

"Good, Melfina. Keep everything by the book, I don't want any problems with the Space Forces or anyone else over here." Gene's tone had changed radically, the indignant frowns and smirking gone from his face. "Jim, you better be ready to accept communications—I don't think Suzuka's going to grace us with her presence yet."

"Right…" In spite of himself, Jim was impressed. "But this isn't over!" he added quickly as he sat back in his station.

"Whatever. Melfina?"

" _We've received a vector from the automatic guidance and I'm bringing the ship in, but traffic_ does _look pretty bad._ "

Gene cocked his head. "Gilliam, you don't have any experience with cross the border by any chance, do you?"

The voice of Gilliam II rang through the bridge. " _I'm afraid not, Gene. In fact, this is strange…_ "

"Huh?"

" _Not only do I not have any past experience, I must admit that my databanks are deliberately devoid of information on the Demilitarized Zone as a whole._ "

"Wait, what? I thought you were a military AI!" Gene asked, turning to Jim. "That _is_ weird, right?"

"Definitely weird."

" _I'm just as surprised as you are. It looks like my databanks were purposefully denied information in this area._ "

Gene groaned. "Great. Thanks, Space Forces. Thanks, Kei Pirates. And thanks, Professor Khan."

"Maybe it was some sort of security precaution?" Jim speculated.

"How so?"

"Well, here's a thought—maybe the original creators of the _Outlaw Star_ didn't want it entering the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire?"

"From what I remember from your boring history lessons, that would make sense, but you have to admit there's something very weird about…" Gene stopped when a shrill alarm interrupted him. "Damn it, what is it now?"

"We've been pinged," Jim said, recognizing the alarm.

Gene calmed down. "By another ship?"

" _No, I mean, not exactly,_ " Melfina explained.

Gilliam continued for her. " _It appears there was a waiting real space message beacon somewhere in the vicinity encoded to this ship specifically. Shall I patch through the encoded message we just received?_ "

A moment of silence followed, though all three of them were thinking the same thing.

"It's _got_ to be Aisha."

"You know what this means, right bro?"

"That we're on the right track?"

"That she _knows_ we're following her," Jim grunted back. "Put it through, Giliam."

" _Very well._ "

As Gilliam II's computer systems began the decoding process, the door to the flight deck swung open and Suzuka entered, sitting at her station. "We've arrived, I take it?"

Gene shushed her in gest. "It looks like Aisha left us a message beacon," Jim explained.

After a few more seconds of computer decoding, a video window appeared under Gilliam's circular interface over the forward screen. It was Aisha Clan-Clan, standing in her amusing-looking food service delivery uniform, or at least the top half of it, since that was all that was visible. She looked angry.

" _Gene Starwind. If you're seeing this, you must not have bothered listening to the letter I wrote you here on Heifong, and you've probably roped the rest of the crew into this as well_ ," the video said. Gene rolled his eyes as it continued. " _So I'm going to give you one last chance: turn around from the border and go back to Heifong and leave me alone!_ "

"Dream on, Aisha."

"Gene, it's a video recording," Jim grumbled. "It's not live."

" _This is your last warning Gene!_ " the video of Aisha declared, as she checked the wristwatch visible on her arm, not covered by the brightly colored uniform.

"Yeah, right, what's some month-old video recording gonna' do?"

" _I'm not joking, Gene!_ " Aisha's voice warned, as if the video could predict what he'd say.

Jim looked visibly worried. "Gene, maybe we should listen to her…"

Even Suzuka looked bewildered. "Is it possible that…"

On the screen, Aisha looked away from the screen, her expression becoming even colder. " _This is Captain-Lieutenant Aisha Clan-Clan of the Ctarl-Ctarl Imperial Navy! I repeat, my name is Aisha Clan-Clan of the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire_ ," she barked in a military fashion.

"Uh, Gene…" Jim's voice began cracking.

"What is it?"

"Gene, she's…"

" _The message, it's broadcasting on all frequencies!_ " Melfina gasped.

" _I have located the missing Space Forces military vessel, designated the XGP-15A-II, now registered as the_ Outlaw Star _! It is the red-colored grappler ship with dimensions comparable to a light cruiser, located at this border checkpoint! Furthermore, I believe this ship has direct experience and first-hand knowledge of the enormous treasure known as the Galactic Leyline!_ "

"Oh, you _bitch_ ," Gene announced, sounding as much impressed as angry.

"Gene…"

" _Gene, we're being pinged by a checkpoint security squadron! They're now on approach!_ "

"Gene!" Jim repeated.

"Melfina, bring the Newton reactor to full power! Everyone, buckle yourself in!"

" _The Munchausen drive is still outside of safe operation parameters, Gene! It can't be activated again!_ "

"Gene," Suzuka said, now shouting. "For once, please don't do anything rash."

* * *

It was her first task upon arriving aboard the navy's current flagship, the _Orta Tomoyotomoyo_ : though she was Crown Princess of the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire—in effect, the second highest authority in the Hashiyo-Hashiyo Royal Family, higher even than her own mother—Fatima Marin Hashiyo Bakr Novo-Novo still was subject to the physical identity check all other civilian and military personnel traveling with the armed forces were subjected to. The physical identity profile was only notable because it was the most tedious and, perhaps, the most embarrassing of those checks.

"Your Highness, if you'll step forward," a navy sub-lieutenant announced at a private security checkpoint, private in the sense that besides the princess, there were only five other officers present, three women and two men.

Princess Fatima stepped forward onto the circular dais in the middle of the room, surrounded by six concentric precisely-machined tracks in the floor. Without waiting for the instruction, she kicked off her shoes and began pulling off her royal regalia, a set of heavy green and tan robes worn by both herself and the sovereign on occasion. She was down to pulling off the low-cut black body stocking she wore underneath the regalia when the navy personnel behind the computer station whispered among themselves and the sub-lieutenant—the attendant and minder assigned to her by the navy—spoke up.

"That won't be necessary ma'am, your…undergarments…shouldn't interfere with the scanner. Please try and remain still, Your Highness."

Putting a hand on her hip, the princess didn't flinch as three pairs of mirrored scanner panels extended swiftly from the ringed tracks and began to hum audibly. Besides being a useful piece of medical technology, the micrometer-wave full body scanner was used by the Imperial Navy, and the Empire as a whole, as a near foolproof biometric authentication device, as one of the technicians was quietly explaining to another, apparently a trainee.

"Even monozygotic twins, who invariably shared the same sex and genetic makeup, and are more common in our species than others—about one in every seventy deliveries—aren't perfectly identical from a physical standpoint. Certain characteristics like unique scars, stature, weight, et cetera, can distinguish them."

"And like all military personnel in the Empire, my physical profile is constantly updated in the military's database, isn't it?" the princess asked indignantly, interrupting.

"Y-Yes, Your Highness."

The scanning arrays began to slowly rotate around her in their circles, producing a perfect digital reproduction of her body, minus her clothing, on the technicians' screens.

"I'm still going to get my blood scanned anyway," she muttered.

"That's correct, Your Highness."

"That wasn't a question, Sub-Lieutenant."

The digital reproduction was completed, and the arrays halted. The technician being trained raised his visor. "Subject is a female in early adulthood and is approximately one-hundred and sixty-four centimeters tall, approximately fifty-three kilograms in weight, with long, dark brown hair."

Fatima chuckled until another officer quickly nicked her in the neck with a blood scanner shaped like a handgun. "Ow!"

The officer stepped away and checked the display on the scanner. "A correct match, ma'am."

"Why didn't you do that in the first place?"

"Again, Your Highness, we use multipart identity confirmation," she repeated.

The crown princess hissed at them angrily. After meticulously redressing herself, the officer in charge began her tour of the of the _Orta Tomoyotomoyo_ , showing off the most obvious features of the flagship of the Imperial Navy's Royal Combined Fleet. Fatima was most familiar with the ships in the 181st Royal Taskforce, whose flagship was the HIMS _Orta Gonogono,_ a large but otherwise typical old battleship, commissioned before Fatima was born. The _Orta Tomoyotomoyo_ was just four years old, the second in the line of _Musashisashi_ -class super-dreadnoughts.

"As you may have guessed, the Big 'O'—I'm sorry, the _Orta Tomoyotomoyo_ —is several times more massive than the navy's battleships, but is not simply a scaled up version of a battleship. Its internal layout has substantial difference, because its strategic role is substantially different. Whereas..."

"Whereas a conventional battleship line forms the core of a taskforce, and may expect to be reinforced by other taskforces as necessary in war time, a peacetime military grouping of warships on assignment cannot expect to be reinforced, and must be an entirely self-reliant in foreign territory. That necessitates a fully independent flagship," Fatima recited thoughtlessly.

Her minder looked surprised. "Yes, exactly."

"We make national military policy, we should at least try and have an understanding of it," she told him with a smirk. "Why don't you show me the fighter compliment?"

"Of course, Your Highness."

As a super-dreadnought, the ship was an anomaly in the Imperial Navy for another reason—it carried its own fighters, rather than relying on a separate line of carriers. Particularly in peacetime, the military was less interested in spending money on comparatively inflexible spacecraft carriers than massive dreadnoughts for flag officers or multi-role destroyers and cruisers.

"You might be surprised to know that since the Third Dynasty began, the empire has only commissioned fourteen super-dreadnoughts prior the introduction of the _Musashisashi-_ class. Four were lost in combat. Another was damaged beyond repair in an accident. The remainder were salvaged or recycled, with one of each class being converted into a museum ship that was distributed throughout the provinces," the officer explained to an uninterested Fatima, who was leaning over the railing to get a better look at the spacecraft on the hangar floor below.

"Your Highness…"

"Yes, I know, museum ships, thank you. Who is that tall woman?" she asked, gesturing.

Shuffling forward in his green coat, he glanced over the railing and frowned. "I….actually don't know," he confessed. "She's not one of our pilots."

The tall woman was standing by a large two-seater fighter that was in the process of having additional booster equipment mounted onto it, making an already impressive spacecraft even more massive, while only partially detracting from its aesthetically pleasing curved and swept surfaces. Fatima was studying a different kind of curve: those of the woman's vacuum-sealed pilot suit, made of centimeter-thick, shiny synthetic purple and white material that didn't leave much of its wearer's body to the imagination. It was the opposite of the bulky space suits worn by civilians, and more like the bodysuits worn by enlisted sailors.

 _And what a dynamite body_ , she thought. It was no exaggeration to call her tall—she just cleared two meters in height, though her pilot suit included large extensions under her heels, like platforms, used to house powerful electromagnets. Fatima was more impressed by the long legs that led up from those heels up to her muscular hips, then a slender waist under a remarkable chest. As she waited by her fighter, the pilot gave an attractive tug of the suit's high collar underneath her chin, inadvertently shaking her chest.

"Your Highness?" the officer asked.

"You're still here?" the crown princess asked.

The fair-skinned pilot turned in the other direction, revealing her straight, dark hair with a blue tinge in it in two long tails that reached her knees. She was more alluring than Fatima thought a naval pilot would be, cramped alone into the cockpit of a war machine. _What a shame_ _about that stern-looking face._

" _Captain Clan-Clan, please report to the nearest officer's terminal, you have an out-of-ship call waiting._ "

Captain Clan-Clan looked away from the crane slowly lowering a pair of auxiliary fuel tanks onto the ship's dorsal surfaces, in the direction of the public address system, completely missing the crown princess standing quietly by the lift with an irritated sub-lieutenant waiting behind her. With unexpected grace for a woman of her stature, she made a straight line for a computer terminal fixed to a retractable metal post extended from the hangar floor, avoiding the numerous obstacles of unattended equipment in her way, and picked up the handset.

"Navy Captain Kalin Saylanin, of the Clan-Clan Family, giving voice authorization."

Stroking her chin, Princess Fatima watched the captain take her call while her minder impatiently tapped one of his boots against the floor.

"Your Highness, we really need to…" the sub-lieutenant began, stopping after the crown princess gave him a look—a closed-mouth smile, head titled, eyes almost squinting—that sent a shiver up his spine. The look continued until the captain hung up the handset with an audible click and Fatima spun around, hands behind her back, silently following the pilot back to her spacecraft.

"That's a very impressive weapon, Captain," she declared, making her appearance known.

Captain Clan-Clan spun around and with impressive poise gradually realized who she was looking after a few uncomfortable seconds, only to have the sub-lieutenant shout in an inappropriate loud voice. "Introducing Her Highness, Crown Princess Fatima!"

"I think she knows who I am, Sub-Lieutenant," Fatima added snidely.

Kalin snapped to attention. "Captain Kalin Clan-Clan, One-Eighty-First Royal Taskforce's First Strike Fighter Squadron, Your Highness!"

"Yes, and I know your name too, I heard the announcement," she muttered, running a hand through her hair. "Sub-Lieutenant, would you give me a moment to speak to Lady Kalin?" She turned her head again, mimicking her earlier look. "Or should I just make that an order?"

The sub-lieutenant saluted and left with equal parts frustration and relief. Similarly, the hangar's other occupants took it as a hint to preoccupy themselves as the diminutive princess stood by the statuesque pilot. "So, your spacecraft…"

"Actually, it isn't my normal ship. I normally pilot a Type Two Modification Three Fighter-Bomber, this is a Type Two Modification One Training Fighter. I'm…actually on courier assignment, transporting a citizen back from a trade mission in the Outer Periphery."

"Aisha Clan-Clan." Fatima got to enjoy Kalin's eyes open wide before she explained. "Her name's been thrown around on occasion at court. Nothing bad, I promise."

Lady Kalin sighed. "Navy Fighters aren't really intended to traverse the whole empire on their own power, so this extra equipment is necessary for me to return to Home."

"If you've been ordered to personally escort her back to the capital, that means they're taking this business of Lady Aisha's repatriation seriously." The crown princess looked at Lady Kalin, this time with a more noble, kingly expression, her earlier grin absent. "I'm sure you'll complete this assignment to the best of your ability, Captain."

"Thank you, Your…Your Majesty."

"It's 'Your Highness', but don't worry about it. I take it you'll be departing when we exit sub-ether space?"

"Well…yes, which is why we've finally become the equipment mounting procedure." Lady Kalin's attractive expression twisted. "I asked for them to begin this process earlier so I could conduct a full inspection of the boosters, the auxiliary fuel tanks, the sensor suite, but I…"

She stopped when the crown princess reached up and put a hand on her shoulder.

"Your…Highness?"

She clearly had something in mind, though she didn't remark on it. "Thank you for imparting your wisdom to me, Captain. You seem very well informed about auxiliary fuel tanks," she said with an almost sweet smile.

She suppressed shudder. _Was that a joke about my chest? How do you even ask a princess that?_

"I'm sure we'll bump into one another again before your departure."

"I'm sure we will, Your Highness."

Lady Kalin remained at attention until the crown princess had exited the hangar, when a hangar crewman warily touched her on the arm. Her muscles visibly relaxed underneath her suit after she saw him.

"Wow!" he exclaimed. "I-…well, I mean…wow! That was Princess Fatima! I didn't even know someone from the Imperial Family was aboard the ship, much less the _crown princess_."

"Can you please just get me a glass of water?" she asked, her voice still strained.

After returning to her stateroom via the ship's transit system, a few thousand meters from the hangars, Princess Fatima sat behind her desk, hands clenched together, waiting for the maid who entered in a Terran-style black uniform and a white apron.

"Your Highness?"

"Summon the ship's chief political officer. I want him to supply a secure comm cube immediately."

"Yes ma'am, but—don't you have all the comm cubes necessary for the summit with the Kata-Kata on hand?"

Fatima looked up from her desk and was about to give one of her smiles when the maid visibly shuddered and immediately scrambled out of the room. "I'll find him immediately, Your Highness."

Crossing her legs and arms, the princess leaned back in her luxurious chair. _Kalin and Aisha Clan-Clan. I don't believe in coincidence, so if this_ is _your doing, Koboro-Koboro—well, I'll play your game._

* * *

 _ **Terms to Know:**_

 **Ctarl-Ctarl Imperial Navy -** The Ctarl-Ctarl Empire's principal military space forces, and the largest naval force in the known universe by combined fleet tonnage.

 **\- Chief Political Officer -** A civilian official from the empire's War Ministry given a provisional military rank assigned to warships of battleship-tonnage or higher, equal to that of the chief executive officer. The CPO's responsibility to ensure obedience to the civilian leadership hierarchy.

 **\- Imperial Navy Fighter Corps -** The fighter arm of the Ctarl-Ctarl space fleets. As the Imperial Navy no longer operates planet-based fighter squadrons (which are part of planetary defense forces), it is a small, elite force.

 **Novo-Novo -** The immediate surname of the royal siblings of the Hashiyo-Hashiyo Dynasty, including Empress Kasara IV.

 **Sub-ether and Real space -** An exotic dimension of reality accessible through the use of sub-ether propulsion systems, distinct from normal or "real" three-dimensional space.

 **\- Munchausen reactor -** A generic used exclusively for sub-ether powerplants used by Earthlings.

 **\- Newton reactor -** A generic describing both conventional powerplants and many other ship systems, also used specifically by Earthling. Derived from British physicist and mathematician, Sir Isaac Newton.

 **Type Two Fighter -** A high-performance multirole fighter spacecraft used exclusively by the Imperial Navy, adopted in Hashiyo-Hashiyo 202. Over twenty-five meters long in its one-seat configuration, it is many time as the massive as the small fighters fielded by the Kei Pirate forces and carries a single torpedo large enough to sink a Terran battleship in the fighter-bomber role. It bears a strong resemblance to Earthling military aircraft in the Atomic Age, particularly with its two large ether-intakes and forward-placed canopy.


	9. The Niburu Boribori

**_The Immortal Empire – Episode 9: The_** **Niburu Boribori**

When the patrol ships on the Terran side of the demilitarized zone moved to interdict the _Outlaw Star_ , Gene did the first thing to came to mind: he ran. His instinctual course of action being the same as Jim's own recommendations wasn't a common occurrence.

"Melfina, plot us a course away from the DMZ and into that dust cloud! Everyone else, strap yourselves in!"

"You're not going to do anything stupid, Gene?" Suzuka asked, tugging on her seat's restraints.

"Sorry to disappoint you, Suzuka! Giliam!"

" _Newton rector at full power! While I do appreciate your course of action, Gene, I would ask you not to…_ " Giliam II began.

"Shut up Giliam!" he screamed, opening the throttle to full.

One thing the XGP-15A-II had on even the most modern patrol ships on the border was acceleration: with grappler arms stowed and a clear vector, no ship could catch them, especially those far into their patrol routes. What they could do was fire on them with machine cannons.

"They're firing Gene!"

"You don't think I've noticed?"

" _Entering the cosmic dust cloud around that white dwarf! Sensors will be compromised!_ "

"That's what I'm counting on!"

They'd entered the product of the white dwarf's tidal forces on passing comets. Descending deeper into the comet-induced dust cloud surrounding the diminutive star, the _Outlaw Star_ 's sensor signature gradually shrank to the pursuing ships until it they had to rely on visual targeting to guide their missile salvos and autocannon fire.

"Seems like the last thing you'd want in the area of a secure border!" Jim observed as he braced himself against his seat.

"Yeah, well, I'm guessing they didn't get to choose where the border was, the Ctarl-Ctarl did!" A salvo of small but numerous missiles exploded mere kilometers behind them, their shockwaves unmistakable.

"Gene!"

"Melfina!"

" _Munchausen reactors within safe temperatures for operation! We're coming up on a workable sub-ether jump vector!_ " Melfina announced.

"For goodness sake, Gene, deploy chaff and flare already!" Suzuka commanded angrily.

"Hey Suzuka, you don't do the budget, okay? We do!" Gene countered. The remark was so unexpected it left Jim staring at them as Melfina counted down and the _Outlaw Star_ vanished in a flash into sub-ether space, escaping its pursuers.

As sub-ether space roared past them through the bridge's large viewports, Jim kept staring at Gene. Gilliam II's voice chirped precisely over the speakers.

" _Damage from the patrol ships is minimal, with some stress on the number four engine. I'll continue to monitor it for any irregular behavior._ "

"'You don't do the budget'?" Jim repeated finally.

"Just let it go, Jim," Gene warned stiffly, climbing out of his seat. "Gilliam, take control. Everyone else, company meeting in _five minutes_."

"Pertaining to what?" Suzuka asked, already the image of calm again.

"How Aisha Clan-Clan just screwed us out of our border pass, and what we're gonna' do about it," Gene immediately answered, not missing a beat as he left the bridge.

Even Suzuka was a little surprised by the quickness of his response. "You wanted him to take things more seriously," she told an equally-surprised Jim.

"Yeah, I'm almost regretting that."

In reality it was ten minutes before Melfina, Suzuka, and Jim congregated in the main hold, shocked to find Gene very slowly picking up the blackboard that had been knocked over. Jim ran over to help him.

"Okay, who are you and what have you done with my bro?"

"Very funny, Jim. I thought you'd appreciate my decision."

"I do, I do…really, I thought you'd stay and fight."

"As did I," Suzuka confessed.

Gene and Jim righted the blackboard. "Well, I like to keep you guys guessing. How 'bout we look at our current problem."

Jim gave a sober nod and sat down in a folding chair, Suzuka and Melfina quickly following suit. Gene crossed his arms pursed his lips in somber silence for almost a minute.

"Okay, James, what's our plan?"

He almost fell from his chair. "Oh geeze, Gene, really?"

"What, I came up with all the plans up to this point, is it so _wrong_ for me to delegate?"

Jim was about to fire back when Suzuka raised a commanding hand. "We call all appreciate Gene's wisdom in fleeing the border patrol, but we do need to consider our remaining options." She glanced at them. "Unless…"

"We're not scrubbing this job, Suzuka. You'll just have to buckle down and regret coming with us in the first place." He turned to Jim. "Come on, you know how this works—something goes wrong, Jim figures a way out of it, and I use my equal amounts of skill and luck to get us through it."

Jim signed. "Gene, I…I don't know if it's just me getting older..."

Gene gave an exaggerating, barking laugh.

Jim pouted. "I'm just saying maybe we should quit while we're ahead. Don't forget, Gene, Melfina and I are 'busters—we don't have your ridiculous luck. We were born under a bad sign," he joked darkly.

"Wait…what the hell's a buster?"

"God, bro, do you not read _anything_?"

Suzuka interjected. "It's the name given to people born in the baby bust after the last Terran-Ctarl-Ctarl War."

"It was one of the smallest generations in Terran history. Birth rates plummeted across the empires." He shrugged. "I mean, Gene, have you _ever_ wondered why everyone seems to be your age or older? Why you don't meet any people my age?"

"You mean little children?" Gene teased.

Jim rolled his eyes again.

"So you think you're unlucky," he mumbled. "Kind of funny, considering everything we've gone through."

Gene put his arm on a corner of the blackboard. "Melfina and you can't be _that_ unlucky."

Melfina smiled. Jim gave a deep sigh. "You done, Gene?"

Sitting in a folding chair between Suzuka and Melfina, he nodded.

"So we can rule out catching Aisha at the border, if that was ever a possibility," Jim reflected. "And we may need to abandon the idea of crossing into the empire with the _Outlaw Star_ entirely."

He looked up at Gene, expected a verbal objection. Gene remained silent, hand on his chin.

"Well?"

"Well what?" Gene asked.

"Aren't you going to complain?"

Gene gave him a look. "James, our job was to deliver a briefcase of gold ingots to the seller in the Empire. We don't need a whole ship to do that."

A look of blatant suspicion immediately came over Jim's face as Gene continued his pitch. "Once we're able to secure Gilliam and the _Outlaw Star_ , crossing the border by ourselves becomes a lot easier."

"Why didn't we do that in the first place?" Melfina asked.

Suzuka noticed Jim impatiently tapping his foot now and raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.

"I thought we might have a chance to cut Aisha off at the border of her ride was slow enough," Gene replied with a shrug. "That didn't work out."

Jim finally snapped, raising both hands over his head. "Enough with the sales pitch, Gene! Then what's _your_ brilliant plan?"

It was apparent Gene was enjoying himself enormously. "Well I thought it was about time I put that enormous amount of luck that I was apparently born with to good use. The Ctarl-Ctarl Empire have the biggest navy out there, right?"

* * *

Lady Kalin Clan-Clan watched the _Orta Tomoyotomoyo_ grow smaller and smaller in one of her cockpit mirrors. In a few hours, the navy's new flagship would begin its maneuvers to establish orbit around a small planet orbiting around a binary system in the empire's Outer Periphery—the so-called "neutral ground" between the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire and the Kata-Kata Democratic Republic, a cold, frozen world that barely passed as habitable. It was there the crown princess would meet with the Kata-Kata government's envoys, including their new foreign minister—the first step in an invariably long process of negotiations between the only two Ctarl-Ctarl nations in the universe.

The democrats and the imperialists. She didn't think this would go anywhere, there'd been a half-dozen other summits with the Kata-Kata in her lifetime and none of them had gone anywhere.

Her formfitting bodysuit had no pockets, so she reached into one of the small pouches on the utility belt she wore over her flight suit, then took out the small comm cube given to her by the crown princess.

 _Well, that's different._ Word had reached her from the one or two friends she'd made on the crew on the bridge how the crown princess's staff had done research on her: they'd consulted the 'Who's Who' website of the Imperial Central University, wher she was enrolled. A website edit done as a good-natured joke from one of her so-called friends described her as _Kalin Clan-Clan: a blue-haired, stern-looking but well-endowed student of biology and Navy Fighter Corps pilot._

She didn't find it all that funny, though she confessed it could've been worse. Watching the heading marker on her HUD, it took a few minutes of travel before she visually confirmed the presence of a lone merchantman, the _Niburu Boribori_. A few minutes later and she could make out the details, its familiar dark brown umbrella structure with communication spires and a single large engine thruster, its identifying green hull flourish.

"Attention trade vessel _Niburu Boribori._ This is Captain Kalin Clan-Clan of the Imperial Navy Fighter Corps. I request permission to begin my scheduled rendezvous and government passenger transfer."

The response came back very quick. " _Oh thank god, ma'am! We were afraid you wouldn't show._ "

"Excuse me?"

" _I mean, this is Nubata Kunono, captain of the_ Niburu Boribori. _Thank you for being so punctual with your orders, Lady Kalin. We're sending over our orbit data now, and are ready to rendezvous at your_ earliest _convenience._ " The voice sounded more normal that second time, but put unusual emphasis on the word 'earliest'. She just shrugged in her cockpit and began making course corrections to intercept within 40 meters of the merchantman, then set another correction to match its velocity. It took about ten minutes for her to drift to the _Niburu Boribori_ and about six seconds to burn to match its orbit. The ship wasn't large enough to have a hangar of its own, much less one massive enough to carry a Type 2 fighter trainer. What it did have was an exterior cargo crane folded into a recess behind the forward superstructure, which the crew was extending to hold her fighter in place roughly twenty-five meters from the ship's hull. With surprising care, it clamped onto her fighter's nosecone.

" _Attachment achieved, Lady Kalin. Unlocking the dorsal airlock._ "

"Thank you." She glanced at the indicator on her wrist. "Suit is secure." Even a fighter as large as hers couldn't fit two adult Ctarl-Ctarl in bulky civilian-grade space suit in the small cockpit—the aggressive tight flight suit she wore had a practical purpose. A screen press followed by pulling a lever, and air rapidly escaped her cockpit as the canopy folded open, exposing her to vacuum. Kalin felt the thick synthetic material of her suit flex slightly as the small amount of air inside it underneath her collar expanded against the vacuum.

"And here I thought it was just someone's fetish," she heard herself say, almost to her surprise, as a small backpack and a leather folder floated by. She quickly snatched them and ignoring the normal procedure of attaching a tether, stood on the top of her seat, spotted the nearby airlock, and launched herself in its direction. Despite having a reputation for having a high tolerance for vacuum, the Ctarl-Ctarl were probably less comfortable with extravehicular operations than the Corbono, if only because they didn't live their entire lives in self-contained suits.

Closing her ship's canopy, she pulled out the recessed lever on the airlock door and then twisted it, letting it swing inwards. As soon as pulled herself inside, she immediate felt the effects of the ship's full-sized gravity cycle on her muscular body, simulating near-normal gravity. The muscles in her legs and back flexed and tightened as she quickly acclimated itself.

The door mechanically shut behind her and the atmosphere was restored—a green light indicated it was safe to remove her helmet, as she did. A merchant marine sailor in a work uniform entered through the door just as she was pulling her long hair out of the helmet.

He looked a little embarrassed and quickly stood at attention. "Sorry, I…Lady Kalin?" She nodded. "Welcome aboard the _Niburu Boribori_. The captain's waiting for you on the bridge, if you'd follow me."

With her helmet under her arm by the backpack, she followed the sailor through the ship's fairly Spartan, copper-colored corridors until they came to the small bridge. Through the doors two male officers were waiting in the green military-style overcoats of merchant marine officers. Waiting behind them with arms crossed and her back against the bridge's aquarium was a genuine naval officer in a familiar green minidress and white breastplate.

 _Wow, you look terrible._ She shook the distraction out of her mind and stood as commandingly as she could manage, which was a great deal given she was the tallest person on the bridge, and possibly in the ship.

"Lady Kalin, welcome aboard the _Niburu Boribori._ " Though she recognized his voice, Kunono nonetheless coolly introduced both himself and his executive officer, and the two immediately exchanged the paperwork that accompanied everything that happened anywhere in the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire, albeit in physical form on this occasion.

Kunono dutifully glanced at packet after she returned it to him. "Lady Aisha!" he sputtered, all the calm evaporating from his voice.

"Yes, I get it, you want me off your ship." Aisha Clan-Clan stood up straight, hands behind her head, and grinned at her cousin. Kalin grinned back, trying to match her mischievous cattiness. "Two years and you still have your hair like that?"

Kalin shook her head and her two long tails of dark hair. "You're one to talk. You know that ring's starting to tarnish, right?"

Aisha grin only grew as she passed the two impatient officers. "Yeah, but I don't wear a bodysuit."

"Remember that," she snickered. "It's been…two years, right?"

"At least." Aisha seemed to scan her with one eye, stopping at her chest. "Surprise those things haven't started drooping yet."

Kalin gave her a loving shove with one arm. "I see living with the Terrans hasn't helped your teeth."

Aisha ran her tongue over her pronounced canines, then smiled less mischievously. "Hi Kalin."

"Hello Aisha."

"Are you two quite done?" Kunono blurted out impatiently. He was there when the ship's crew slammed shut the door into the airlock behind them, their last stop off the merchantman.

Kalin raised an eyebrow. "What's his problem?"

"Who the hell knows? They're all weirdos," Aisha replied as she caught the backpack tossed to her. She peered inside and, as expected, found an identical fighter pilot flight suit, in white, blue and green rather than white, blue and magenta. She dropped the pack and began undoing her shoulder guards.

Kunono's executive officer turned to see his captain reenter the bridge and sit in the station next to him. "Well?"

"They're about to disembark."

"Thank the God of the Ctarl-Ctarl," he muttered dramatically. "Do you think it's impossible to be reassigned from the Heifong trade routes, somewhere farther away from the Empire. Or _her_?"

He scratched his cheek. "You know, it _is_ that Empire that pays us a great deal of money to take this ship back and forth across the border with valuable cargo." He then rested propped his chin against his hand. "But I really could do without ever being drawn into the schemes of Aisha Clan-Clan again."

The two men sat in silence before Kunono pressed his hand against a switch at his station. "Have Lady Kalin and Lady Aisha disembarked the ship yet?"

In the airlock, it took almost ten minutes for Aisha to put her long hair into a different hairstyle that would fit inside the flight suit's helmet, as well as change out of her minidress, breastplate and leggings, and store those articles, along with her hair ring, boots and shoulder guards in the pack.

After zipping up and pulling at the uncomfortably tight collar, Aisha glanced around her arms. "Where's the vacuum switch?"

"Left wrist, under your chronograph."

"Huh?"

"Your watch, dear cousin."

Aisha blushed. "I knew that," she muttered, taking her left wrist and pressing on the large switch. There was a hiss of air and her life support system rapidly sucked the remaining air out of the suit—it shrank mostly under her narrow, muscular shoulders and biceps, as she demonstrated by flexing her arms back and forth noisily.

Kalin watched her muscles expand and contract underneath the suit, and briefly considered if, despite her advantage of height, she was the flabby one.

"Not bad."

"Probably beats the suits you wore with the Terrans," she replied, donning her helmet.

Aisha did the same. "I actually didn't spend as much time in vacuum as you'd think," she told her before confirming her conditioning with a thumbs up.

Kalin used the nearby control panel to empty the atmosphere out of the chamber before opening the outer door, and Aisha followed closely behind her to her waiting fighter, still grasped by the loading crane. They clamored into the tandem cockpit and the canopy closed behind them.

In the pilot's seat, Kalin powered up her controls, while Aisha leaned forward in the instructor's seat to get a better look past the seat in front of her. " _Niburu Boribori_ , this is Captain…" she began, only to be cut off by the loud, audible clang of the crane releasing the ship.

"What did you do to them?" Kalin repeated.

"Nothing, I swear! They're just weirdos!" she insisted.

Kalin imagined she could feel the anxiety of the merchant marine crew as her fighter turned direction and accelerated away.

"Have you spoken to Uncle Dawid and Aunt Ayesha?" Kalin asked her as Aisha settled into her seat.

"Not since before I got my orders to return." By the tone of her voice, it sounded like Aisha had been dodging that particular issue. "I'm not sure what I'm going to say to them when I get back."

"Tell them the truth."'

"Oh, like you know what the truth is," Aisha moaned.

Kalin glanced at Aisha's reflection in one of her mirrors. "Actually, I meant something else entirely," she admitted with a deep chuckle, reaching into one of her belt's pouches and producing a small comm cube.

"What the heck's that?" she asked superstitiously.

"A comm cube from the Crown Princess Fatima Marin."

"What?" Aisha snapped, immediately reaching forward past the seat, groping ineffectually for the cube but instead mostly knocking around her cousin's helmet. "Give it!"

"So _I'm_ wondering why the heir to the crystal throne would want to leave a private message for an ambassador plenipotentiary who's been out of the Empire for two years," Kalin surmised, easily holding the cube just beyond her reach in the cockpot.

"Give it give it!" Aisha barked.

With a laugh, Kalin let her snatch the cube out of her hand. Despite not having any means to actual play said cube—the fighter lacked the necessary system—Aisha clutched the cube between her gloves and stared at it through the glass in her helmet.

Kalin marveled at the silence as she prepared the ship to enter sub-ether space. "Welcome back, Aisha."

* * *

 _Terms to Know:_

 **Baby Busters –** Also called busters, they refer to people born in the Terran postwar baby bust that coincided with the economic collapse across the whole of the Orion Arm of the galaxy. In Terran space, the interstellar depression lasted past T.S. 160.

 **Ctarl-Ctarl Merchant Marine –** Also called the Imperial Merchant Navy, it encompasses all civilian merchant vessels registered to the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire and is staffed largely by demobilized sailors and officers from the Imperial Navy. As such, it retains some military appearances, and operate in Corbono, Silgrian and Terran space.

 **Gravity Cycle –** A basic system aboard large spaceships, making use of exotic matter to generate artificial gravity within the confines of a vessel.

 **Imperial Central University –** Actually a series of institutions located throughout on the Ctarl-Ctarl homeworld, many active-duty military officers remain enrolled in it, taking periodic classes throughout the length of their commissions.


	10. The State Apartments

**_The Immortal Empire – Episode 10: The State Apartments_**

When Giliam II took control of the _Outlaw Star_ , it gave Jim a chance to bootup his computers and being network raiding. Their little incident on the border hadn't affected network security in his targeted area, so there weren't any new security measures to account for.

The lights in Jim's room died and he immediately rose to his feet only to hit his head on the low ceiling. "Damn it!"

Before he could even demand what was going on, power was restored.

"Must've been a fluctuation in the distribution system," he muttered to himself. Annoying as it was, considering what the border security forces had been firing at them, they were lucky.

 _Where was I? Right, the navy's little secret server._ On one persocom, he brought up the link to the Heifong Chamber of Commerce's network portal for interstellar import/export businesses. The portal had legitimate uses, of course, and legitimate users, but on the backend of one of the pages, behind a specific page in an out-of-date business directory, was the access barrier to a data repository belonging to the United Space Forces' Ninth Expeditionary Fleet HQ.

"I'm online!" he announced to himself. The Space Forces' emblem, a circular, Chinese-style insignia with a star pattern over part of it, flashed briefly before being replaced by line after line of command language instructions.

"What a mess." It wasn't that the Space Forces' files on the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire were particularly well encrypted or concealed, they were just a jumbled mess, carelessly scattered across multiple hierarchies with no discernable pattern.

 _If this is how they treated their official envoy, in effect the military ambassador to the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire who should've been an invaluable information source, no wonder these people lost the last few wars._ He would've been more resentful if it was actually something he or Gene paid taxes for, like the planetary and civil defense forces on Heifong—in lieu of any sort of monetary or human investment in the Space Forces, it just seemed sad.

He began typing with one hand. "Alan…Shekar…Chan-dra-sekhar. Let's go, Admiral Two-Names," he muttered before querying his name. A long list of tagged files was brought up. "Oh boy. Thanks for making your file tagging not suck, Space Forces."

 **[ALL] DATABASE REPORT SUMMARY SEARCH RESULTS BY [TAG]**

 **R.S. 149.11.3 CHANDRASEKHAR REPORT**  
 **R.S. 149.11.6 CHANDRASEKHAR REPORT**  
 **R.S. 149.11.7 CHANDRASEKHAR REPORT**  
 **R.S. 149.11.9 CHANDRASEKHAR REPORT**  
 **R.S. 149.11.10 CHANDRASEKHAR REPORT**  
 **R.S. 149.11.13 CHANDRASEKHAR REPORT**  
 **R.S. 149.11.14 CHANDRASEKHAR REPORT**

The list of results kept going, filling up the small screen and sending it scrolling unendingly. He stared at the ever-growing number of results going into the three digits.

"Crap," he mumbled, dropping the persocom. He'd need another one to actually search through the results, the first one was nonresponsive.

"Guess now I gotta' search by date, see if I can figure out why the reports ended. God, this better be worth my…"

" _JIM!_ " a voice bellowed over the intercom.

He felt like he nearly had a heart attack. "Damn it, Gene! What?"

" _We need you on the bridge, dear James_ ," Gene replied more evenly.

He heaved a sigh and promptly climbed out of his cot, and minutes later found Gene sitting in the pilot's crew position, alert yet relaxed. Melfina was standing next to Suzuka's crew position. Jim was struck by how orderly, even vocational everyone looked, and began tucking his shirt into his baggy pants.

"Taking a little nap?" Gene asked.

He laughed sarcastically. "What's up?" Then he frowned. "What was that blackout?"

"Uh…" Gene began, pointing an unoffending finger at Melfina.

"Newton Reactor fluctuation. Giliam?"

" _There were a reactor output fluctuation resulting from white dwarf cosmic dust contaminating ether intake, well within the safe limits. It_ did _cause the power distribution's safety overrides to kick in briefly from the resulting ether reaction from exotic matter._ "

"Thanks for the physics lesson," Jim mumbled. "So what?"

Gene grinned. "Company meeting. And unlike the rest of you, I'll be succinct: I fixed the problem."

"You solved the 'Aisha Problem'? I'm impressed, next you can solve the Galactic Depression."

Gene gave a similarly sarcastic laugh, before swapping his expression for the more serious. "So, what've we been hired to transport to the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire?" he asked, taking care to enunciate.

Silence. Jim stared at him before breaking the silence. "What…are you joking? You cannot be this stupid." He looked at Melfina. "Is he this stupid?"

Melfina held back a laugh in that way of hers. "I think he meant that rhetor…"

"We've been hired to transport _payment_ to the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire, in the form of _gold ingots_ from Novo-whatever to the empire _._ Not, for example, tonnes of surplus weapons from the empire to Novo-whatever."

"So we're just going to ignore the second, and arguably, more important half of the job? What is this, thinking on our feet?"

Gene's eyes practically flashed with delight. "I found someone, who can, for a very reasonable fee, smuggle us across the border to the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire. With our suitcase. Then we'll make _Aisha_ clear this whole business up and make the return shipment."

"That really _is_ the greatest plan you've ever come up with, Gene."

"Thanks, James."

"Wait, smuggle?" Melfina asked.

"That word has a very specific connotation," the previously silent Suzuka warned.

"Better if I said 'transport'?" Gene asked thoughtfully.

"There's a difference, Gene," Jim warned. "Wait, forget that—did you book transit for all of us with another company?"

"'Course. Don't worry, I can get a pretty good deal."

"With who, bro?"

Instead of replying, Gene's cheeks puffed up.

"Gene?"

"I did it through a third party. Or a…fifth party." Gene shook his head. "What I'm saying is, I don't know the name, but they came through _highly_ recommended."

"Oh, 'highly' huh?" Jim asked Suzuka.

"Highly," she replied with a small smile. "Jim, were you investigating those military servers?"

"Yeah, just to…uh…pass the time."

"Find anything interesting?"

"Not…not really," he replied awkwardly. "Though there's a lot to sort through."

"That's gotta' be a pain, seeing how none of us actually speak Ctarl-Ctarl," Gene mumbled, sounding more down-to-earth.

"What're you going on about, bro?"

"The military servers. The _Ctarl-Ctarl military servers._ The Ctarl-Ctarl Imperial Navy is the biggest around, right, ergo they must have the biggest military network!" All composure lost, he pounded his fists against the furniture. "What the hell've you been doing Jim?"

"I've been hacking the Space Forces servers, what else? Do you think I could hack into the Ctarl-Ctarl military network _from the other side of the border?_ What're you, nuts?"

Now Gene was screaming. "What the hell are you going to find there? The whole point was to find out where Aisha was!"

"Oh, now I _know_ you're insane! Do you think there's anyone here who's capable of that? Let me answer in case you do: no!"

"You ever get the impression these two have a problem communicating?" Suzuka asked Melfina quietly, getting a giggle in response.

* * *

Thousands of years ago, the original Victory Square in Home's Imperial City was designed so that from the entrance to the square, the central obelisk obstructed the blue-white supergiant rising in the western sky. In the intervening centuries, Victory Square had been destroyed and rebuilt almost a dozen times—the obelisk was taller and more massive, obscuring more of Hokiyo's sun in the sky.

The commander-in-chief of the Ctarl-Ctarl Imperial Navy watched the day's first deployment of the Empress's Guard, loudly marching in goose-step with rifles and polished armor along the masonry. She followed the procession until a bench with someone sitting on it came into view.

"Your Excellency, good morning."

The navy chief locked eyes with the Imperial Prime Minister, who looked almost stereotypically the early riser, wore a civilian greatcoat over an ugly suit, a tall vacuum flask in one hand, a briefcase the other.

"Good morning, _Jo Kwoto Hashiyo_ ," the prime minister replied from his bench.

"You look like a political cartoon, you know that?"

The honor guard clacked away. Prime Minister Koboro-Koboro also watched them depart before turning back to the navy chief. "Is that a compliment, Admiral?"

"No, not even a little. Here to see Her Highness?"

The honorable prime minister glanced at his large flask, as if examining it for leaks, as he answered. "No, it's rather too early for that I think. Though the way you worded your question _does_ suggest…"

"Yeah, I really don't have time for your antics. Good morning, Your Excellency." The navy chief walked off, leaving the prime minister to stare at her back as she departed, flask still in his hand, with a bewildered expression she hoped.

 _That's one of his tricks: lure you into long conversations._ Doing her best to avoid further distractions, she cleared the square and entered the Imperial Palace's grounds, stopping only to stick her hand out for a biometric scan by a uniformed guard with a sheathed saber, and the admiral was otherwise recognized by enough personnel to enter palace itself. It was a long, winding walk through the various ceremonial halls into the State Apartments, the complex within the complex, staffed not by the Empress' Guard, but by a civilian body: Imperial Household Agency.

 _Just what I wanted to deal with this morning._ It appeared no one in the agency slept, since a suit-wearing official in a sash was waiting for her with an unfriendly look on his face. A rare point of agreement between the military commanders-in-chief and the prime minister was their shared abhorrence of the agency.

"Your Excellency Lady Admiral—what can I do for you?"

The navy chief put a hand on her hip and ran another through her long blonde hair. "Very cute. If she's not awake yet, I'll wait in her sitting room," she told him, reaching for the handle of the tall door behind him. "And don't say the words 'appointment' or 'permission'," she growled at him after one last look.

"Lady Admiral, you really…you can't just…" The official's polite protests didn't stop her from pulling the massive door open and entering the State Apartments, furnished differently than the rest of the palace.

 _She always did like bright colors._ "Your Excellency!" he called out.

There was another official in the same dull grey suit waiting in the room. Karen shoved her out of the way. "If you want to be useful, send up another pot of coffee with her breakfast. Black." She cocked her head, now aware she'd skipped breakfast to do this. "And a bagel or something."

The shoved junior official took this as an order, going "Yes, Your Excellency!" before scrambling off.

 _Looks like the morning shift_ is _easier to bully. I'll have to remember that._ Up the stairway and passing through blue-wallpapered room after room, she stopped at one that stood out: the curtains were drawn and a pair of motionless women stood flanking the double doors in formfitting tunics, leggings and hoods, all spotless white. Not the same suit-wearing agency officials, but two of the Her Majesty's personal attendants, women of the Handmaiden detachment.

The navy chief pulled her cloak over one shoulder and flopped down on one of the two couches in front of her, grinning at the handmaiden while listening for the agency official's incoming footsteps. "The army, the household agency, and yourselves. We're able to pay you, right? You're not interns, are you?" she joked.

One of the handmaidens gave her a faint smile. "Good morning, Your Excellency. And no, we're not."

"She awake?"

"Not yet, Your Excellency."

"I'll wait," she announced, just as the agency official and his junior stormed in, looking particularly displeased. The two handmaidens made no acknowledgment of their presence, which only pleased the admiral further, but the two grey suits waited there out of protest until a third dressed like a domestic came in with a serving tray, which the admiral immediately descended upon.

"You want some?" Karen asked with a bagel already in her mouth as the server poured her coffee. The agency officials kept looking displeased, so she turned to the nearest of the two handmaidens. "I'm sure you can't tell me if you are, but are you one her doubles?"

The handmaiden raised an eyebrow.

"I only ask because…well…I mean, I've known her since we were children. You do look like her." She took another cup of coffee. "Take it as a compliment, the empress is a beautiful woman. You look just like her."

In response, the handmaiden reached up and pulled off her own hood, revealing a head of short-cropped blonde hair.

"Except for the hair. You've definitely got the face and chest down."

The official made one last protest. "Let me remind Her Excellency, the commander-in-chief of the navy, that this is not the Admiralty, with your big, useless tattooed ship floating at the pier. We have _rules_ in the palace."

She finished the cup. "I'm sure you do."

Twitching, the official looked like he was going to burst a blood vessel and stormed off, the junior official following behind him. "That almost made this whole trip worth it," Karen announced, putting the cup down and turning to the two handmaidens. "You two don't talk much, do you?"

"No, Your Excellency."

She turned away. "You people better speak to the Empress's Guard. They're already doing that whole 'silent sentry' thing outside," she warned as the other handmaiden, responding to some unseen signal, slipped quietly though the door.

"She's awake then?" she asked. "Right, of course, you can't actually answer any of my questions." The handmaiden gave an almost patronizing smile as she fell back onto the couch, and started counting the flourishes in the wallpaper from the ceiling downwards.

She missed the other handmaiden opening the door back and whispering something into the hood of her comrade. "Lady Admiral, if you'd like…"

Karen was through the doors even before she finished, entering the brightly lit room. Empress Kasara IV was sitting on her bed in a silk nightgown suspended from one shoulder, her bright red hair still in disarray over her head.

"Karen? What are…"

The admiral had already taken a deep breath. "Good morning, Your Highness!" she nearly shouted.

Kasara IV blinked her half-open eyes. "Good morning, Karen. Do you know what time it is? What're you doing here?"

The navy chief sat down at the foot of empress's bed, taking in the surroundings. "Wow, lavish. Soban-Soban wasn't joking."

Rin Soban-Soban was an elder friend of them both, and the deputy war minister, appointed by Kasara IV. She also paid Her Highness approximately three surprise morning visits a month which she didn't care for. "Did she put you up to this?" the empress asked coldly.

"She might've given me the idea, Kasara."

Through her messy red bangs, Kasara's large blue eyes narrowed. "What do you want, Karen?"

"The Minister for Kata-Kata Affairs, under the Foreign Minister."

The two paused when an actual maid enter with a serving tray that, with a handmaiden's help, she arranged on a nearby table. The domestic offered Karen some tea, which she declined, feeling her stomach full of coffee.

"What about the minister?" she asked, holding a centuries-old teacup with care.

"Sack him."

Now she looked surprise under her messy hair. "Excuse me?"

"Fire him."

Kasara stared at her older friend, military cloak rumbled over the bedsheets. "Is there a specific reason I should dismiss him, Karen?"

"Sack him, and until Koboro-Koboro appoints another one, your sister can be acting minister."

Surprise was replaced on awareness on the empress, whose face had a naturally innocent quality about it, even when just awake. "Did Fatima put you to this?"

Karen laughed at the suggestion, throwing her head back.

"Karen!" Kasara almost shouted, equally sincere and unamused.

"Fatima couldn't put me up for a private tour of the _Orta Yamano_. And I'm not pretty enough to catch her interest," she teased her sovereign. "What I'm suggesting is that you sack the minister, tell Old Tom to find a replacement, and in the meantime give full authority to your little sister as acting minister. While, coincidentally, she's negotiating with the Kata-Kata. It's works out well for everyone!"

Kasara IV yawned, politely covering her mouth. "Except for the current minister."

"Well, that's the thing about government, isn't it? You can't please everyone."

"You don't even know his name, do you?" Kasara IV asked suspiciously.

"Why would I need to know his name? He has an adversarial relationship with the Crystal Throne's envoy to the Kata-Kata government, that's all I need to know." She glanced over one of the handmaidens, the chesty one who was convenient standing by the nearby comm-handset. "Call your sister if you don't trust a childhood friend."

Kasara IV was visibly resisting the urge to roll her eyes and instead forced one of her kind smiles. "I don't think that's necessary."

The navy chief mentally congratulated herself as Kasara began to delicately pick at her breakfast pastries. "Very well then," she said finally.

The other handmaiden stepped towards the empress subserviently. "Your Highness, there's a visitor requesting your presence. People's Assemblyman Vtori-Vtori is waiting for you in the Hall of Prisms."

 _Other monarch business,_ Karen thought.

The sovereign yawned again. "Wait, who?'

"Logan Vtori-Votri is member of parliament in the _Kaiga Ctarl-Ctarl_ , used to be chairman of the Conservative Society Party. One of the senior-most MP _s_."

"And you know his name?" Kasara asked, getting a shrug in response. "What's he doing here this early? Is this going to become a normal thing, morning visitors?"

Karen just shrugged again. "God, doesn't he have something better to do?"

"No, Your Highness, but you do—your duties as Lady Chancellor?" the handmaiden reminded the sovereign.

She stared at the hooded woman blankly, before a look of understanding and dismay eventually rose on her face. "God, is that today?" She just remembered her duties as Supreme Chancellor of State Religion.

"Yes, Your Highness, it most definitely is."

"We can't reschedule?" she asked hopefully.

"Not without contacting the chancellor and the executive college, I would imagine." The handmaiden paused. "And by that, I mean Your Highness, no, you absolutely cannot reschedule. The executive collegeis convening _specifically_ for this event."

Kasara IV's lip trembled for a moment. All three women in the room immediately recognized the look. For a fraction of a second, the empress had felt like crying.

"I'll leave you to it…" Karen muttered softly, standing.

The sovereign belatedly climbed out of bed, two long, brown legs emerging from the sheets, stood up straight, jaw clenched. "What does the assemblyman want from me?"

"Didn't he started that awareness campaign to raise birthrates throughout the empire, with the dumb-sounding name?" the navy chief muttered while eyeing a pastry. "The Child Crisis? The Baby Crisis?"

"The Family Crisis, Your Excellency," the handmaiden explained.

 _Do you think he's going to complain why you're not married? Or pregnant?_ The navy chief kept that to herself. Now was not the time.

"Is he nice?" Kasara IV asked, pulling off her nightgown. Immediately, a handmaiden interposed herself between the navy chief and the sovereign, holding a dress that she took.

"Excuse me, Your Highness?"

"MP Vtori-Vtori, is he nice?"

"I…don't think so, Your Highness."

Kasara IV frowned again. "Why can't we have more nice MPs? I mean, why can't _we_ generally be kinder to one another? The Terrans at least pretend to get along in their parliaments, why can't we do that?"

Karen cocked her head. "Well, you can do that, but then everyone in parliament has to smile at everyone else, and they have to pretend to be friends, and then they have to pretend to enjoy each other's company, and before you know it everyone hates everyone else and parliamentarians try and kill one another and passing condolence cards for the wife of whatever senior pervert had a stress-induced heart attack."

Kasara IV stared at her. "Or so I heard, Your Highness. Let's get you dressed, good morning," Karen said, making a directly line for the double doors. "Oh—and there was a minor security alert at the demilitarize zone, on the Terran side. Nothing to concern yourself about."

"Lady Karen!"

One hand on the door, the navy chief stopped and turned to her sovereign, who was standing by her bed, examining the dress, while a handmaiden meticulously dressed her in expensive undergarments. "There's a charity ball tonight, isn't there?"

Averting her gaze, Karen stared blankly at the handmaiden while fumbling for an answer. She wasn't even planning to be on Home that evening, she was boarding a carrier in orbit for a surprise inspection.

"Yes, Your Highness. For stimulus spending for Cordoba 5, hosted by the deputy prime minister," the handmaiden answered, snapping her bra shut. She was referring to the fifth planet in the Cordoba 32416 planetary system, which was enduring a local recession.

"Wow, you even keep a schedule. I need to get one of you," Karen muttered.

The empress put a demure hand in front of her mouth and looked away. "I…don't feel like going, I think. Would you please take my place?"

 _Can I do that? Is it even legal?_ Karen wondered as the handmaiden fitted the sovereign's underwear.

"Rin, would you please see that the commander-in-chief of the navy receives an invitation?" she asked, glancing at the one Karen suspected was a double.

"Of course, Your Highness," she said, now standing by the door.

"Thank you," the sovereign announced in the other direction, to no one in particular, as she dismissed the handmaiden next to her and began putting on the dress herself.

That had been unexpected. "Of course, Your Highness, it'd be an honor. If you'll excuse me."

With less pomp than she'd arrived, the admiral left the room, a handmaiden shutting the door behind her.

"One of my childhood friends," Kasara IV explained apologetically.

* * *

 _Terms to Know:_

 **Admiral of the Fleet of the Hashiyo-Hashiyo Nation ( _Jo Kwoto Hashiyo Ctarl-Ctarl_ ) - **The highest uniform rank of the Ctarl-Ctarl Imperial Navy awarded by parliament, traditionally held by the appointed commander-in-chief of the navy, or by the sovereign instead.

 **Ctarl-Ctarl Imperial Maritime Military Fleet -** Sometimes called the 'Royal Navy' to distinguish itself from its spaceborne counterpart, the naval arm of the Tomoyo-Tomoyo Empire during the Warring States Period. Purely a planet-confined force predating space travel, after the Tomoyo-Tomoyo victory and interstellar expansion of the empire, it largely became a ceremonial force, and bears many aesthetic similarities to the pre-Toward Stars naval forces on Earth.

 **- _Orta Yamano -_** The flagship of the eight _Orta Yamano-_ class fission-powered battleships. Unlike in Earth history, the battleship concept did not become obsolete among the Ctarl-Ctarl due to the lagging development of naval aviation compared to advancements in metallurgy and propulsion, and the willingness of the Tomoyo-Tomoyo Empire and others to justify their construction. Designed just prior to the shift from ballistic to missile artillery towards the conclusion of the Warring States Period, they displaced over 90,000 tonnes and were over 300 meters in length at the waterline, with a main battery of four triple-turret 52 cm naval guns. As with the Pyotr Empire's cruiser _Aurora_ on Earth, it is maintained as an operational museum ship by personnel of the Maritime Fleet.

 **Empress's Guard -** Formally known as the Imperial Guard's First Division, the contingent of elite army personnel deployed to the royal residences and the surrounding neighborhoods as well as providing security for the Imperial Family. Called the Emperor's Guard during the reign of Anton I, the most visible cadre of the sovereign's labyrinthian legion of bodyguards and attendants.

 **Home ( _Hokiyo)_ \- ** One of the common names for the Ctarl-Ctarl home planet, orbiting a blue supergiant towards the center of the Nochi-Nochi Star Cluster, and the center of the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire.

 **Imperial Household Agency -** A powerful and controversial government agency dating back to the First Dynasty, intended to serve the daily needs of the sovereign and the Imperial Family, but long criticized for being obstructive and making the Imperial Family less easily accessible.

 **\- The Handmaidens ( _Sondaiya_ ) - **Another cadre of attendants to the sovereign, an exclusively female unit originating during the reign of Empress Marianna IV of unknown size and scope, wearing unusual white hooded uniforms. It was revived by Kasara IV shortly after her coronation.

 **Imperial State Religion -** The official faith of the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire, part of the wider Imperial System, devised by the Tomoyo-Tomoyo Empire during the Warring States Period. Lacking a pantheon of deities and a creation myth, its philosophical elements and ceremonial practices largely focus on ancestor worship, fulfilling civic duty and demonstrations of loyalty to the state.


	11. Midway Base

**_The Immortal Empire – Episode 11: Midway Base_**

"This memorial is dedicated to the Corbano traders and merchantmen who lost their lives during the First and Second Freespace Wars, Hashiyo-Hashiyo 189 to 202."

Melfina was reading one of the translations of the original text on the pedestal of a stone monument in what passed as the town center of the asteroid colony Midway Base, a Corbanite merchant exclave orbiting one of the rare binary star systems on the main Corbanite trade routes through the in the Stellar Wastes, just inside of the Kei Guild's economic zone. At least the location was appropriate, between an open-air marketplace and the branching point of two main thruways that cut through compact offices and apartments behind the monument.

Holding her weapon against her shoulder in a concealing fabric wrapping—Midway Base was a weapons-free zone, like many habitable asteroids—Suzuka approached Melfina and inspected at the tall rectangular stone sitting atop a pedestal. In the stone was carved an artistic high-relief of elaborate detail, with at its center a number of Corbanites in their spherical or oblong suits, standing heroically on the raised deck of a spaceship.

"They look quite noble," Melfina observed reverently.

"Yes though…maybe not as noble as they could," Suzuka reminded her. In the relief behind the rather plain, circular shapes of the Corbanites were more than a dozen tall Ctarl-Ctarl sailors, clutching rifles, bayonets, and all sorts of dramatic-looking weapons. Indeed, their well-endowed, muscular forms towered over the Corbanites in the foreground, with lifelike detail in their hard faces under their combat visors and above their formfitting uniforms. Poised like dangerous predators, they filled the background the relief.

"It does seem like it'd be a better monument to the Ctarl-Ctarl, doesn't it?" Melfina asked.

"I wouldn't really know." Suzuku looked up over the top of the monument at the transparent canopy above them, and the accretion disk deforming from the gravity of Midway's neutron star on its larger, less dense partner. It was a good view. "They say it's been twenty generations since the Corbanites put themselves at the mercy of the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire. And they say it was around that time the Corbanites started exploring space in earnest."

"I've never been good at history," Melfina confessed in such a matter-of-fact tone, Suzuka shoulders twitched.

"We should go, we'll be late otherwise," she told Melfina.

While Gene and Jim made the necessary preparations to the ship, Melfina and Suzuka were given the task of meeting with Maron-Go, the owner of a transport company that moved a variety of cargo along the trade route back into the empire.

"So, how _do_ you tell between Corbanite males and females?" Melfina asked her.

"Take off their suits," Suzuka responded too quickly. She cleared her throat. "Even here Corbanites still take trade so seriously that they maintain an environment preferred by humans, Silgrians and Ctarl-Ctarl, and only survivable to them with their containment suits."

"Quite a sacrifice in the name of commerce."

Maron-Go's offices were only a block from the Trader's Monument, an otherwise unremarkable four-story building wedged between and a youth hostel and fast food restaurant advertising its burgers.

"So, this is what success looks like?" Suzuka asked.

"It looks like Starwind and Hawking's," Melfina pointed out.

"So success looks more or less like failure." Melfina laughed at that.

They entered to the sound of a friendly chime and the sight of an unfriendly-looking receptionist, a Ctarl-Ctarl woman around Suzuka's age. The dark-skinned blonde wore her hair in a severe-looking bob, along with reading glasses on a silver chain and a too-small business suit.

Melfina had a whole, amicable greeting planned, only to have Suzuka preempt her. "We're here for a meeting with your boss."

"The legendary Twilight Suzuka," the secretary mewed, looking up at her with narrow, crimson eyes through her glasses. "Chief Maron-Go is waiting for you on the third floor. Follow me." Maron-Go's secretary circled around her desk and led them out the lobby and to the stairwell. Between her and Melfina, Suzuka was treated to the annoying sound of two pairs of high heels clicking up two flights of wooden stairs, as well as their guide's too-short skirt creeping her thighs as she climbed.

As promised, Maron-Go was waiting in the plushily-furnished 3rd floor conference, four thin limbs extending out of a dull blue sphere with silver highlights and a pair of glowing green photoceptors in a recess. She stood up from her couch to greet them.

"Welcome!" a friendly voice declared through a metallic-sounding speaker.

"Chief Maron-Go, Twilight Suzuka and Melfina of Starwind and Hawking Enterprises," the secretary announced very primly and with unnecessary volume.

Maron-Go seemed to hold back laughter. "No, I see that Bethany, thank you very much."

Bethany gave a formal but rather insincere-feeling bow, sinewy muscles flexing underneath the dark grey suit before she left.

"Please forgive Bethany, I didn't hire her for her warm smile and sunny disposition," Maron-Go explained cheerfully.

"I can see that," Suzuka smirked.

After some idle chitchat, Maron-Go got to the point. "As I understand it, you're looking for passage into the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire with a valuable delivery, and your own ship isn't available?"

"When you put it like, Chief, it sounds so sordid!" Melfina assured her cheerily, gesturing with her hand charmingly.

"Will that be a problem?"

Maron-Go's photoceptors slid in their groove. "While I do appreciate you being so forthcoming for me, having given me the impression that you cannot go to a normal transport service or travel agency, even a secure one, I have to think it will be."

"That's not necessarily true," Suzuka whispered softly.

"Which means you have some issue with either Terran border enforcement, or the border patrol of the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire." Maron-Go's thin fingers came together. "Seeing how you desire to go into the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire, we can probably rule out the later. Does all of this sound correct so far?"

Melfina said nothing. Suzuka gave a contemptuous frown. "Yes."

"Ah, very good. You really should have just said so, there's nothing to be ashamed about." Maron-Go paused, photoceptors shifting again. "Well, I suppose that isn't true, is it? Anyway, we can certainly make that work. The Ctarl-Ctarl are infamously stringent and draconian about their border enforcement, and you're certainly not the first Terrans who've approached me for just that task."

 _Though I'd wager our circumstances aren't that familiar_ , Suzuka thought.

Leaning forward, Maron-Go reache towards a small persocom sitting on the table in front of her. "In fact, I have an opportunity that might meet your exact needs." Picking up the device, she held it close to her suit and spoke aloud, "Bethany, would you please come back in with that folder?"

The photoceptors turned back to them. "How does your company feel about religion?"

* * *

At the small walled compound at 10 Advent Prospect across from the office of the Postmaster General and yet another museum, the official urban residence of the Prime Minister of Her Imperial Majesty's Government, Tomas Koboro-Koboro prepared to leave for his morning business. His son and maternal nephew, both in his employ, were already up and about well before he was, both grasping thick folders of documents under either arm.

"The party chairman wanted you to know that he'd be dropping by this evening," Georgy told him in the hall up to the main entrance.

"Really? To what do we owe that honor?" he asked humorously.

Georgy looked annoyed on his behalf. "He wanted to speak to you about the new initiatives in the coming Four-Year Plan, the controversial ones I have to assume. _I_ think that _he_ thinks you're not pushing hard enough for them."

"Still doesn't think highly of me."

"I think he thinks you're resting on your laurels, and not getting back to business," the youngster speculated dryly.

"Oh well, we're all business here at Advent Prospect, aren't we?" He glanced over at his nephew Rafe, who had his younger sister dangling on his back, arms wrapped around his neck, as she demanded he carry up her to the study on the second floor. The prime minister's nieces and nephews, the ones too young to be employed, were common houseguests.

"You want me to fob him off, sir?" The resourceful Georgy was already thinking of excuses.

"No, that won't be necessary. What's one more dinner guest? Someone for the girls to entertain," the PM said with a chuckle. "Probably just upset about the opposition pushing for welfare cuts, what else is new?"

"The real enemy," Georgy hissed.

"That's too harsh. They're doing their due diligence." His boot-wrappings completed, he gestured at his son to hand him the green naval greatcoat hanging on a nearby hook.

"Aren't you meeting with the Procurator-General?"

"I was. I might still."

"What does the Admiralty want with you?" He frowned.

He beamed at him. An educated guess would've been he was visiting the nearby War Ministry, but then his normal grey suit would've sufficed. If he was wearing his old naval officer's greatcoat, it was because he was paying a visit to the distinguished chiefs of the Ctarl-Ctarl Imperial Navy a visit at their local office, a rather meek sign of respect.

"Nothing out of the ordinary. They probably want some hint as to the upcoming naval budget proposal that'll go through parliament."

"Will Her Highness be there?"

 _Ah, straight to the point. Good lad._ There could be no question as to who Georgy meant. Kasara IV did not pay visits to the naval chiefs at their local branch. It might've been a little unfair to say she didn't have a mind for military matters, but it was hard to deny that she disliked the daily business of navy (on top of publicly decrying warfare was harmfully wasteful). He was confident Her Imperial Majesty had never attended one of these daily meetings held by the naval leadership.

No, Georgy meant the empress's aunt, the former-Empress Marianna IV, the sovereign who'd appointed him after parliament's elections. The one he'd forced to abdicate.

In keeping with the mandated norms and unspoken norms of the Socialists, their prime minister took a tram about the Imperial Capitol when it was too far to practically walk somewhere, as he often did to the Imperial Palace; the prime minister's limousine and military motorcade usually sat unused in parliament's motor pool. The permanent police presence made his assigned protective unit redundant in his opinion.

Less than thirty minutes after leaving his residence, he was at the Naval Annex of the sprawling Imperial War Ministry, a gigantic complex visible from space, a squared-off fortress in the middle the metropolis. Past the saluting honor guards in their polished breastplates and rifles, he found his way into the policy meeting of four uniformed grand admirals and the commander-in-chief of the Ctarl-Ctarl Navy, where the conversation ended abruptly with his entrance.

"What an unexpected pleasure that you'd join us, Your Excellency," the _Jo Kwoto Hashiyo Ctarl-Ctarl_ sighed, resting her head on her hand in irritation.

"Lord Prime Minister," another said, the grand admiral appointed to the Imperial General Staff, the eldest man in the room, a few years Tomas' senior. Three grand admirals obediently rose to their feet, leaving the naval chief and the grand admiral sitting next to her in their seats.

" _Zhu-i-Jo_ ," he said, quietly and rather meekly as he took an empty seat made available to him by a attending junior officer. "Please don't trouble yourself on my account, in fact I beg your pardon for the interruption."

The naval chief gave snort, head still on her hand. "Is there some concern you're bringing to our attention?" the next grand admiral, Clan-Clan from the 181st Royal Taskforce, asked.

"No, nothing like that. But I was told you were convening to discuss the selection of ten obsolete cruisers to be decommissioned and sold to the Corbanites, and what that would mean for the change in naval procurement in the coming fiscal year," he said humbly as he removed his naval greatcoat, that of a low-ranking captain, and set it aside. "I thought I might able to shed some light on that."

"That would actually be helpful, Your Excellency," another grand admiral, the Deputy Minister for the Naval Industries. "We were just discussing the tabled aircraft carrier from the last Five-Year Plan, whether or not it could be resurrected, what was it, the _Yodna…Yodna…_ "

"The _Yodna Toratora_ -class super carrier," the grand admiral sitting across the table from him reminded him. "How do you not know this, you're the deputy minister…"

"I'm bad with names," he cut him off.

The prime minister watched them chatter back and forth, saying nothing.

"Bad with names, good grief…"

"The point is, we wondered if the _Yodna Toratora_ -class was back on the table."

Tomas took this as his sign to add his input. "In the postwar atmosphere back then, a new class of dedicated carrier was fairly toxic, especially with a general election coming up, and the late emperor wasn't feeling it either, but I think if you added it in your next procurement the Assembly of the Empire could be convinced to bring it back with the right messaging," he offered his informed opinion.

Clan-Clan spoke. "Well, that's the thing, we're not _that_ desperate for a new class of carrier either. But if the _Yodna Toratora_ is completely dead, we'd like that…'credit', if you will…to apply against the early retirement of the _Orta Yatano_ -class pocket battleships. The _Orta Yatano_ -class isn't even that old, much less obsolete, it's just that the enemy it was to fight no longer exists since the Terrans scrapped their battleship fleet," he said, standing up and sorting through the documents at his hands. "We'd give up the new carriers if we could keep the whole of the _Orta Yatano-_ class, excluding the _Orta Bororo_ , which we'd cancel repairs on and scrap…"

"God, Clan-Clan, tell him everything why don't you," the naval chief barked. Clan-Clan shrank back into his seat.

The deputy minister sighed. "Why not, he'll just figure it out eventually, he always does."

"Actually, it'd be my pleasure to…"

"Your pleasure to _what_?" a voice growled loudly. It belonged to the remaining officer sitting next to the naval chief, Grand Admiral Marianna Kasarin Hashiyo-Hashiyo, the abdicated empress-turned private citizen-turned admiral. When she'd appointed Tomas in the Year 204, after the general election, she'd already worn the uniform of a force admiral—after she abdicated, parliament and the navy saw fit to give her a two-rank promotion for her leadership during the Freespace Wars and the overwhelming victory over the Terran Empires. She'd gone back to the navy, now just another admiral in uniform.

Tomas Koboro-Koboro saw no benefit in trying to avoid her, as angry as she was.

"Pardon me, Your Highness."

"Why don't we break for an early lunch?" the naval chief suggested loudly, rising to her feet. Three of the four other admirals followed suit. "Our PM probably has better things to do with his time…"

"Oh, come now Marianna Kasarin…what's the point of having a prime minister if we're not going to actually _talk_ about parliament?" Clan-Clan objected. The naval chief put a hand on his shoulder, her meaning unmistakable: _drop it._

"Admirals, my office aside, you should know that I sympathize with your concerns, and you have my full commitment to the furtherment."

"Commitment?" Hashiyo-Hashiyo asked sharply. Clan-Clan winced. "Commitment! I think you presume too much, Your Excellency! Maybe these other officers aren't familiar with what your 'commitment' means?"

"Marianna Kasarin…"

"I agree with Hashiyo-Hashiyo," the naval chief announced. "We're wasting our time anyway, the Assembly of the People could still resurrect the Armed Forces Reduction Plan."

"Well, wouldn't that be something to ask the man who commands a majority in both houses of parliament?" Clan-Clan asked.

"Let it go, Dawid." After that, Clan-Clan shrank.

Despite his insistence that he only wanted to be helpful, the meeting quickly disbanded, leaving the PM alone at their table. Tomas Koboro-Koboro gave a disappointed sigh and began plotting out the rest of his schedule as he exited, only to hear the door slam shut behind him as soon as he left the conference room.

Feeling his ears twitch, he took an educated guess. "Marianna Kasarin, what can I do for you?"

The grand admiral advisor to the naval leadership—that was as close to a formal title as she had presently—was standing in her gold-trim dark green coat, a large, shining medal resting on her chest, leering at him, unmistakable fury behind those large, sapphire-like eyes all the Hashiyo-Hashiyo monarchs seems to have. Calm, comforting blue eyes replicated on a million portraits and a billion propaganda photos, barely holding back burning rage.

"Lord Prime Minister," she growled, holding a briefcase in one hand. The other was clenched in a fist. Tomas considered which hand seemed out-of-place for the former Empress of All Ctarl-Ctarl, a fist clenched in anger or a briefcase full of military bureaucracy.

"Why are you here?"

He answered too quickly. "This issue with naval procurement is going to be…problematic. My party is not the kind to write blank checks even if we have a majority in parliament. We…"

"Shut your goddamn mouth," she commanded, shoving him into the corner. "You and your goddamn party and your goddamn parliamentary procedure, do you think I've forgotten what you did?"

Tomas did something he'd been a master at since he was a child: he suppressed his instincts. His instinct to protect himself, that basic, biological response that was the product of millions of years of evolution. He even suppressed it when the grand admiral grasped his wrist through the sleeve of his greatcoat and began to squeeze.

"No, that's not it, is it?" she asked, growling deeper. "Tomas Koboro-Koboro is no fool, no, you're the genius who brought down a sovereign and outlived another. Tomas Koboro-Koboro, the king-maker. Tomas Koboro-Koboro, the first minister of the empire!"

By then, the former-empress seemed to have grown under her greatcoat. Tomas wondered if it was physical retreating on his part, but he thought it unlikely: Marianna Kasarin was actually _growing_. He watched her musculature begin appearing underneath the wrinkles of her uniform.

"But it's my fault, isn't it?" she asked, her voice cracking under the rage. "What did I expect when I appointed a man like you to that post? And here you are, two sovereigns and a regent later, showing up to _gloat,_ eh?"

He thought he might interject but she continued. "Don't deny it, Minister!" she shouted. As she began to froth at the mouth, he noticed how large her canines looked. The squeezing was starting to hurt. "Do you think you'll just pull the strings for this entire Immortal Empire? That you are the sovereign, and that I and the rest of my line are the no-name nothing politicians waiting in the ranks of parliament? Do you not? _Do you not_?!"

The grand admiral's pupils had contracted into fine, vertical slits, along with her bared canines and the bulging muscles of her arms and back. Tomas had remained silent throughout the snarling onslaught, but managed to break free from her grasp and raised both arms, palms open to her, closing his eyes. Marianna Kasarin froze too, her wide blue eyes flicking back and forth across his strange gesture.

 _Now say something!_ "M-May the God of the Ctarl-Ctarl preserve you, Your Highness…and, if you'll please excuse me," he manage to reply without stumbling too much, lowering his arms and removing himself from between the grand admiral and the wall. She stood there in the empty hallway as he departed, taking deep breaths, shrinking back to her normal stature and turning to watch him hurried leave, hands hidden in his sleeves.

The prime minister hid those hands because, as he crossed through halls now occupied by personnel of the navy and other branches, he didn't want them seeing the head of the Imperial government's trembling in his greatcoat. As discreetly as he could manage, he exited the annex, passed through the outdoor security, and back onto the sidewalk, coming to a brisk halt right before he could right into oncoming traffic.

 _That,_ he thought, _was an Immortal Ctarl-Ctarl._ Then he reminded himself that what he'd seen was actually an incomplete metamorphosis; after all, the former-empress had not turned into a savage beast and torn him limb from limb. _Though she would not have done that. No matter what, she was Empress of All Ctarl-Ctarl. She is not some petulant child._

Besides, she might not even be capable of doing such a thing, she was not such a young woman anymore either—had she ever completely metamorphosed since her coronation? It didn't seem like the sort of thing the Imperial Household Agency would allow, given the physical and mental taxing it took. _Not that I would know_ , he thought, chuckling at himself and resisting the urge to rub his bruised arm.

"Your Excellency, sir?"

He turned, hiding his hands behind his back. Rafe had been waiting on the sidewalk for him, now dressed in his normal work attire.

"Rafe, what brings you here?" he asked, his voice as calm as he could manage.

If his nephew noticed anything unusual, he made no remark of it. "Word just came in from the Outer Periphery. I expect Grand Admiral Clan-Clan will've heard the same."

"Clan-Clan?"

"The Clan-Clans, Ladies Kalin and Aisha—they've been, well, delayed."

He raised his greying eyebrows. "Delayed," he repeated, enjoying Rafe's calm explanation, turning the word over in his head. "So is it…pirates?"

Rafe nodded, surprised by his good guess.

"Thank you for bringing that to my attention, Rafe. I don't think it's anything to worry about."

* * *

 _Terms to Know:_

 **Stellar Wastes –** A very large "empty" region of space, as defined by the absence of stars, galactic northeast of the Tenpa Empire and USSA, between the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire and Corbanite Space. The Stellar Wastes are still home to a number of occupied systems on the frontier of Kei Guild Space, but the distance between systems can make travel an expensive or dangerous proposition.

 **The Immortal Ctarl-Ctarl (** ** _Yohang Ctarl-Ctarl_** **) –** A literary term with complimentary and martial connotations, derived from immortal warriors of popular legend. Among the Ctarl-Ctarl it is often associated with those capable of deliberately performing metamorphosis.

 **\- Beast Form Metamorphosis (** ** _Volo Gara Ctarl_** **) -** Often called an ancestral gift, the completed phase of temporary Ctarl-Ctarl metamorphosis, a unique ability rare even among the Ctarl-Ctarl, into a large, dangerous quadruped carnivore. Though highly valued in warrior culture as both a sign of physical prowess and for its near-invincibility, its rarity and impracticality make it less common than "incomplete" metamorphosis, a useful ability widely practiced in the military.

 **Imperial Ministry of War –** The empire's cabinet-level ministry charged with daily administration and logistical support for the Imperial Armed Forces, with operational command of the military going to the Imperial General Staff.

 **\- Imperial Ministry of Naval Industry -** Subordinate to the War Ministry, a government agency in charge of design, manufacturing, and regulation of war materiel, overseeing the state-owned war industries and design bureaus.

 **The Reign of Marianna Kasarin Hashiyo Bakr Novo-Novo -** The last of the Hashiyo-Hashiyo wartime monarchs, from the Year 183 to 204. One of the youngest sovereigns crowned (in the place of her elder brother), Marianna IV was commander-in-chief during two major interstellar wars, before her abdication.

 **\- The First and Second Freespace Wars -** Also called the Terran-Ctarl-Ctarl Wars or the Great Galactic Wars, by far the largest (and most recent) of the numerous wars between the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire and the unified front of the four Great Terran Empires. Ending with a catastrophic Earthling defeat, the Second Freespace War marked the end of the "Ctarl-Ctarl Wars".


	12. The Admiralty Building

**_The Immortal Empire – Episode 12: The Admiralty Building_**

"Presenting Ron MacDougall, captain of the outlaw ship _Shangri-La_ ," the butler, or butler-dressed man, announced at the door.

"Ron, thank you for meeting me in person again. I know what an inconvenience coming out here must be for you."

Ron put on his best, smuggest grin for the suit-wearing plutocrat standing at the far end of the office next to what might as well have been a throne. Ron had taken some care to dress better than he usually did, though it wasn't a competition. Probably.

"It wasn't a problem, Mr. Hoburn."

Hoburn, a large, bald man who gave the Ron impression of being younger than he looked, smiled back at him. His face alone made Ron's own scars and injuries look minute, and he speculated there was more below his collar. "You know, Ron…I hope you don't mind if I call you 'Ron'."

"Not in the least."

"Ron, you've been the most reliable contractor I've hired for this job. In fact," he began, glancing at one of the large screens behind his throne. "…I think you've had more success than the next three combined."

 _He's the type to call me a 'contractor'. That's informative._ "Well, I'm not the bragging type. Nowadays your outlaws—or contractors—don't like to tangle with the Ctarl-Ctarl, or anywhere near Ctarl-Ctarl space. There's plenty of other money to be had after all without dealing with an army of metamorphs," he explained confidently.

"Well, you tell me you think you aren't being compensated appropriately for tangling with those animals, and I'll make sure you are," he said encouragingly. "You know, I was going to say it was just a lack of gumption, but maybe young people are too…practical...for this sort of thing."

Ron held back laughter. "It's a young man's game, in my opinion."

Hoburn seemed to ruminate about that, scratching his chin. "And as for yourself…no offense, of course."

That time he did laugh, deep, short bellows. "It's fine. I'm not young anymore. But I am the best."

"The MacDougall reputation," Hoburn said in agreement, circling his large desk. He was a large man, larger than Ron, under his well-tailored suit, but despite being muscular, his movements weren't as easy as they should've been. Ron imagined a past injury, a bad one. Hoburn paused in front of an ostentatiously large liquor cabinet next to an unattended bar, all done in mahogany and marble. "I don't suppose…?"

"No thank you, maybe some other time." Hoburn opened the glass door regardless and began surveying it.

"You're on the job, I can respect that. The others aren't as disciplined as you, Ron," he told him, apparently considering the decision meticulously. From where Ron stood, the labels on the bottles mostly looked the same. _My eyesight's not what it used to be either._ "Apologies, I'm getting sidetracked, you're too easy to talk to, Ron. You should know that there's going to be more salvage work when we clear out of here, moving on to the next sector of operations."

"Military risk?"

"Minimal. Our next base of operations will be at the end of the Abaoaqu Line at the border of Ban Space. Well within human space, no trouble from the Imperial Navy, but that means 'Space Forces'."

"The Abaoaqu Line? That'd have to be the Victoria System, wouldn't it? Not many naval battles in that area."

Hoburn turned to him, now holding a glass in one hand. "You know your history. One of the last battles of the First Freespace War, left behind an older ship graveyard than our last few, but relatively unmolested after the years." He poured dark-colored liquor out of a bottle into it. "Same contract rate with…say, a twenty percent bonus? Twenty-five for priority salvage?"

"That's very generous."

"I'm in a generous mood, Ron. Besides, I think a man like yourself isn't afraid of tangling with humans more than the Ctarl-Ctarl." Hoburn took a deep gulp of the glass, emptying half of it, before pouring more and turning back to him. "To more productive, lucrative work from you. And to me paying you more for it."

Ron flashed an agreeable grin, as Hoburn downed the glass. "You know, I wanted to ask _what_ you were doing with all of this. Before long, you'll have the better part of a Ctarl-Ctarl Naval Line, won't you?"

After the glass was empty, Hoburn laughed. "Not quite. I wouldn't worry about it, Ron."

There was a slightly awkward pause. Despite the impression he might've given, Ron was genuinely grateful for the work. Unlike your typical pirate, Hoburn paid well, and unlike the great pirate lords, he was clear, consistent, and un-temperamental. Normal, in other words. "Then I won't," he said simply, putting on the assuring expression he'd used for his entire career. That was the end of it.

* * *

In the yellow-and-white headquarters of the Terran Admiralty in the city of St. Petersburg, a supposedly secret meeting of top Naval Ministry officials was being hosted by a Space Forces admiral unlucky enough to be responsible for regular briefings to top leaders on Earth. In a room overlooking the Neva River, an expensive table was adorned with the miniature blue Spaces Flags as well as those of Sovereign Earth, along with five report packets, one at each seat for each guest.

The meeting's host was eager to get started, though he had no choice but to put up with his five guests socializing and catching up. Whatever intelligence he was expected to deliver was secondary to their rekindling very old friendships.

"Whenever you're ready, sirs," he reminded them louder than he needed.

The five guests—three civilian parliamentarians, and two fleet admirals—kept chattering among themselves, laughing over old jokes and patting each on the back. When they did finish, he was finally able to begin the briefing he didn't want to give in the first place.

"Good afternoon, gentlemen. Now that you're no longer _busy_ we can begin the Parliamentary Subcommittee on Special Navy Projects from Toward Stars One-Thirty to One-Sixty," the host explained while fixing his collar. "To introduce myself, I am Admiral Stanley…"

"Come on, get on with it!" one of them bellowed from the far end of the long conference table. The host twitched at the fact he'd been patient enough to allow ten minutes of schmoozing between the guests but wouldn't even get a chance to introduce himself. Unfazed, he continued.

"Over the last three decades both the Space Forces and the Terran kingdoms as a whole have contended with a steady progression of both piracy and outlaw activity throughout human space. At the same time, the four Earthling empires waged the two Freespace Wars against the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire, the first ending in an armistice and the second in a catastrophic military defeat."

"Wow, son, don't pull any punches, will you?" one of the elderly parliamentarians jeered as he elbowed his neighbor. All five burst out in a circle of laughter.

The younger admiral bristled at the latest interruption. He stood in front of the old fashion projection screen, visibly manipulating a large dial remote on a cable. After a few seconds, different images of Earthling fleets appeared one after another. "Despite those serious strategic, economic, and political… _setbacks_ …the actual technological capabilities of the Space Forces have continued to steadily advance, though few advancements have been substantially utilized since the end of the Second Freespace War."

The host fumbled with the remote. The screen changed to a missile silo packed from floor to ceiling. "Development on nuclear-encased anti-ship torpedoes, first deployed during the defense of Liberty Bell, has continued. Our present arsenal includes weapons that can reliably kill any non-Ctarl-Ctarl dreadnought in a single direct hit."

A chuckle went through the audience.

"Arguably, our thermonuclear torpedo arsenal represents the greatest aspect of the navy's total force projection," the hosting admiral explained, schematic diagrams of different anti-ship torpedoes appearing behind him on the screen.

"Now we just need ships and bombers capable of using them," the other parliamentarian mumbled somberly.

"Actually, I was just turning on to the subject of ship design," the host admitted. "As you gentlemen are aware, the weaponization of shipboard grappler arms by the Chinese Pirate Guilds is something the naval leadership and design bureaus had avoided for many years, until the creation of first prototype intended as a testing platform."

The screen changed to a schematic view of a sleek, cylindrical light frigate appeared behind him with tall dorsal and ventral maneuvering thins. "This is the XGP-15A-I, a prototype light frigate launched back in the 'Forties. It's based on the rejected GP-14 long range patrol and security ship, a fairly capable design that was deemed prohibitively expensive in the wake of the disastrous Freespace War and the privatization of long range security duties to corporate fleets. The GP-14 was never adopted, but the design was combined with the grappler concept to produce this."

"Sounds cost effective," someone said.

"Yes, I suppose so, sir." He adjusted his glasses. "Unfortunately even that initiative ran into obstacles. The XGP-15A-I was approved for testing, but only after it was coopted for the ongoing Keyline Project headed by Nguyen Khann," he said, gesturing at the signature seal in the bottom right corner of the document. "After this, the XGP-15A-I prototype was completed and put through trials. The design was modified to better serve the purposes of the Keyline Project, resulting in the XGP-15A-II, which was quickly completed."

"Excuse me, it says here the changes between the first and second prototypes were informed by 'Third-Party Advisors to the Space Forces'." One of the civilians looked up from the report at his hands. "Who were these 'Third-Party Advisors'?"

"Your Excellency, I think…"

"Pirates. The Kei Pirate Guild specifically," the oldest of the naval officers answered, loudly and clearly. "Please continue, Admiral Sterlitz."

Sterlitz clenched his jaw momentarily before nodding. "Of course. The first prototype is still in our possession. The second prototype…well, it's a little more complicated."

The same admiral spoke again. "Again, the Kei Pirates. They took possession of it. With our approval, they paid for it after all. Something about buying out the Space Forces' share or something. Please continue."

Sterlitz nodded. "Otherwise conflicting reports do suggest that the XGP-15A-II is now in civilian ownership, under the name the _Outlaw Star_. At some point the Kei Pirates lost their expensive purchase, probably the consequence of internal power struggles in the late 'Fifties."

"And the Keyline Project was shelved. Nguyen Khann passed away two years ago, officially terminating the project." The official adjusted his glasses. "More money wasted."

"Well, it is what you're known for," another member of the audience jibed. Sterlitz forced a smile.

The rest of the presentation was comparatively mundane, reviewing designs for carriers that would never be built and defensive platforms that the Space Forces couldn't afford. His audience looking bored, Sterlitz tried to rush through it as quickly as possible. After its conclusion, he wasn't surprised to find most of the attending had left their reports behind in their rush to leave, then went about collecting them when someone took him by the shoulder.

"Minister Kano. What can I do for you?"

Kano, a thin, white-haired man old enough that he almost looked fragile underneath his dark suit, looked very unamused. "What the hell was that about, Sterlitz?"

"Excuse me, Your Excellency?"

That fragile hand shook his sleeve. "Don't give me that. You might've fooled those idiots, but unfortunately, my responsibilities keep me from joining their blissful ignorance. How many hundreds of millions of wong were poured into the Keyline Project? How many into the XGP ships themselves?" he snapped.

Sterlitz stared back at him. "Do you mean separately or combined?"

Kano was now trying to harm him, or at least cause him physical discomfort, through his grasp. His anger continued unabated. "We know _exactly_ what happened to the second XGP ship. We know that it's the _Outlaw Star_ , we know that its registered out of Sentinel III and based out of Heifong City. I came here, Admiral, because I was hoping for an explanation _why_ the Space Forces was not retrieving hundreds of millions of wong if it _knew exactly where it was!_ "

He didn't have answer immediately. "That's unexpectedly specific, Your Excellency."

"Don't test me, Sterlitz."

He looked around the conference room, confirming they were alone.

"And you didn't just ask during my presentation?"

"Remember what I said about those idiots, son?"

He nodded frowned simuntaneously. "First things first, Minister—everything I just said?" Kano's thin white eyebrows raised. "Forget it. All of it."

"If this is another joke, it's a very poor one, Sterlitz."

"I don't joke, Your Excellency, and furthermore, not only is that information useless—it's a liability. There's only one thing you need to know about the XGP, and that it was written off as a complete loss: the ship, the technology, the whole damn Keyline Project. All of it wasn't worth one goddamn wong."

Kano stared at Sterlitz before rolling his eyes at what he considered a tasteless joke. When Sterlitz's expression didn't change, he began to panic. "You're serious."

"What did I just say about joking, sir?"

"That…that's impossible! Just the ship alone…."

"Do you know why we had that briefing here in St. Petersburg?" Sterlitz hissed at him.

Kano shook his head. "Because we're certain that Ctarl-Ctarl intelligence has a direct pipeline to Naval Council briefings in the Capitol."

The minister's eyes almost bugged out of his head with that. "I suppose I was incorrect about the Keyline Project being completely useless—we might potentially expose the Ctarl-Ctarl's source in the Naval Council."

"That's a hell of a way to spin it positively," Kano snapped, looking back at the projection screen. "So, it's all lost then?"

"Even if the Space Forces recovered the XGP, what does that give us? A undergunned frigate with grappler arms. An expensive toy that barely qualifies as a novelty when we still possess the first prototype. And the Keyline Project files…well, you know, Your Excellency."

Kano stared at him. "Four hundred and sixty million. The institute, the researchers, the project grant, and two XGP ships. That's how much. That's including the offset that came from seizing Nguyen Khann's estate after his death, which was more than you'd think."

Sterlitz didn't bother hiding his surprise. He didn't think even the cabinet was capable of putting that precise a figure to the sum. "That's…not that bad. It's not the War Bank Bailout."

Kano snorted. "If the navy was bailed out for thirty _trillion_ wong, everyone in this room would be dead." His voice made it clear that he wasn't joking. "Still, I was hoping the navy's prospects were more promising on that front than those of what's left of the Khann Institute."

"Unrealistic expectations, Your Excellency. I mean…I'm sorry I couldn't help you."

The minister's eyes flashed. "You know, Sterlitz, I read up on you for this meeting." The admiral looked displeased immediately. "You've had a very interesting career in the Space Forces. Not at first, no, just another flagship officer. But after you were wounded during the First Freespace War, they put you to work in intelligence. Between the wars you were part of the Space Forces infiltration unit, the Terrans in the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire."

Sterlitz's eyes flashed in annoyance. "I don't advertise that fact," he said with a stern frown.

"Don't worry, Admiral, your secret is safe with me," he announced dismissively. "We both did our jobs during the Freespace Wars, and if you're worried I'd leak one of Space Forces' few successful infiltration efforts for petty anger, don't bother. I represent the government of Earth, and that's bigger than either of us."

" _Well, I'm…glad to hear that, Your Excellency_."

" _Maybe what you did was…misguided, but you were following orders. No one can fault you for that_."

In an unlit, unfurnished office, their conversation was visualized in a single digital oscilloscope window on a large monitor, flanked on other side by portraits of the speakers: Stanley Sterlitz and George Edward Kano. Two young women listened to the conversation on open-topped helmets, one of them acting as an interpreter and translating the conversation for an older man who stood behind her, from Chinese into Ctarl-Ctarl. The other was writing down various numbers, including **460,000** and **30,000,000,000,000**.

"Prepare a report for the Center. They'll want to hear this."

"Yes sir."

"And ask _them_ what they know about this Stanley Sterlitz character."

* * *

 _Terms to Know:_

 **Abaoaqu Line -** A former trade route running to the edge of Ban Pirate territory, passing by the Sentinel system and ending in the Victoria system, named after a legendary creature from Mewar mythology. It went into disuses before the First Freespace War.

 **Keyline Project –** The joint government-corporate-pirate initiative to search for, and eventually access, the legendary Galactic Leyline, the treasure at the center of _Outlaw Star_. Though its mission was ill-defined, above all it placed importance on Earthlings finding the Leyline before the Ctarl-Ctarl.

 **\- Nguyen Khann Institute –** Originally a leading cybernetic, bio-android, and bio-mechanics research body bearing the name of its founder, it was mobilized for the Keyline Project, and produced numerous materiel for the project, including bio-android serial number VSD02C, for the Pirate Guilds, better known as Melfina.

 **St. Petersburg Main Admiralty Building (** **Зда́ние Гла́вного Адмиралте́йства)** **–** Completed in the early 19th Century for the navy of Imperial Russia, in the modern times it houses the admiralty for the combined Terran Space Forces. Even after the massive reduction of in those forces, it remained in use.

 **Terrans in the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire –** Along with the legitimate expatriate and immigrant population of Earthlings living in the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire for decades, an unknown number of Earthlings were sent to pose as Ctarl-Ctarl citizens as deep cover sleeper agents. The secret program reached its height between the Freespace Wars.

 **War Bank Bailout –** The informal term for the Emergency Economic Response Law (T.S. 148) and the subsequent Terran Banking Relief Plan (T.S. 149) conducted by Earthling governments in response to the collapse of the futures and loan industry almost immediately after the end of the Second Freespace War, immediately prior to the galaxy-spanning economic depression. The largest in the history of interstellar capitalism, it was paid by not just the four major empires, but even the Kei and Ban Pirate Guilds, the final total ran into more than thirty trillion of wong, but was never disclosed to the public, to considerable controversy.


End file.
